I'm looking to put a set of tires on a set of cheap wheels I recently acquired, they are purely for training. I don't want to recapitulate the investment I made in Conti's for my racing wheels. On the 'bay these CST tires are attractively priced, how bad do they suck?

You may know this, CST=Cheng Shin Tire. They make Nashbar, Performance and Maxxis tires among others. Cheap and poor QC. Sometimes you get good ones and then they are worth the $10 or whatever.

a friend of mine rode a set of czars for about 2000 miles. he didn't like them much but they were cheap. to me the 23's he had looked a lot narrower than the 4000s 23s on mine.

I read reviews on semi-slicks for my mountain bike and they seem to say that you're taking a gamble on quality.

I ran a set of CST comp (czars I think) on one of my road bikes this summer while waiting for the tires I wanted to come in. They were not all that bad really. The didn't seem to wear fast so that might make them good for the trainer. I'm not going to tell you they are the best tires ever but they were not nearly as bad as I expected. Especially for the money. You don't have much to lose if you don't like them. I say go for it

I have taken the gamble on Ebay. They actually rode decent and have gotten zero flats on them for about 6-700 miles. That makes the $10 worth it. I have not done hard riding though. They were wire beaded which I'm not a fan of if the tire needs to be junked mid-ride, but thats an extremely rare event. Give it a go!

I have no complaints about the Cheng Shin tires I've bought under the Nashbar label. A little heavier but they rode fine and lasted a little longer than the Michelin PR2 and PR3 I used at about the same time. Price ranged from $5 to $10/tire depending on the sales available at Nashbar at the time.

They are cheap and poor quality in general since their focus is OE supply for millions of cheap bike like objects, not competition with Michelin/Continental.

Guess who makes MANY Continental tires...

A $10.00 tire is a $10.00 tire regardless of who makes it.