so...tire question...
 

i'll be getting new tires on saturday (paycheck, i love you!). i'm thinking armadillos, at least in back. but i sort of want blue (sort of a baby blue) tires. i ride brakeless, so there's lots of skidding and skipping. anyone know of durable colored tires?

i know when i had my mountain bike, the colored tires meant softer rubber, which meant:
1. more grip
2. wears faster

dont know about the road tires if thats what your going for

I don't think any of the traditional flatmaster tires everybody on here likes (gators, dillos, michelin carbon, conti 2000) come in colors. You do have plenty of other options though, lots of the mid-range vittorias and vredesteins come in blue. For some reason the performance web site is overrun with blue tires right now.

Yup. The black coloring supposedly comes from some carbon compound, which makes tires wear longer.

So, black in the middle, baby blue on the sides: http://www.pricepoint.com/detail/119...ncher-Tire.htm

I've got black tires with blue stripes. vitorrias I think. I like em.

they match my bar tape too.

I rode Michelin pro lites in baby blue for awhile. I wasn't doing too much skidding, but I was commuting through crappy north philly streets. In 5 months I only got one flat.

but

That was enough for me, so I switched to Armadillos. No flats since.

I'm running 700x25 Vittoria Zaffiros in red right now. They also have blue, green, yellow, etc. No flats yet*, but it's only been about 125 miles.

* None due to foreign object punctures anyways. Electrical tape does not make a good substitute for rim tape, but triple layering it seems to work. Only two tubes lost to the nipple holes so far. I need to get to a bike shop...

I ride Rubinos as a lot of people on here do. No issues at all. Good road feel. The Armadillos might be "bulletproof" but feel like absolute crap on the road. Also, only red, as far as I know.

I don't mean to hijack but i have a reated question, if one were to skid with colored tires, would that leave a colored skid?

there aren't blue ones but i've recently been involved in a love triangle with my bike and a radonneur on the rear.

+1

lots of people around here ride rubinos. they're not the most durable tire ever, but last a reasonably long time, low price, and come in colors.

armadillos will more or less never flat, but they handle so poorly in wet weather, they become a liability.

i rode armadillos for years and can only recall a handfull of flats, all of which were caused by really extreme things - nails which totally slashed the tire, miscalcuating a bunny hop which landed my rear wheel square against a curb at speed, destroying my rim, etc.

the wet weather handling just got to me and after eating sh1t on a wet corner one day and ripping half the skin off my leg, i said "no more armadillos."

Panaracer makes the T-serv in blue. It isnt baby blue but it is a veary durable tire.

i've never used them and have no idea how they stand up to skidding or city streets, but performance has the Vredestein Fortezza SE tire in blue on sale for $22.97 now (originally $50).

linky

i had a set of vredesteins that lasted me two years, every day riding, skidding, etc. bad streets too! they get my vote, and my dollar. lots of neat colors too. if you have rei in your town, they seem to have odd colors.

well, yeah, REI...i think that's here. vredesteins, i'll check those out. i was considering rubinos. i'm mostly concerned with durability, so i'll ditch the color idea if i have to.

i actually kind of like my armadillo in back, and i've thought about mixing the colors, but i can't stand the way that looks.

mostly, i just want to be sure that i don't burn through tires really fast and flat all the time. i can't afford that, both from buying tubes and new tires and also from just having my bike laying around.