colored tires.
 

okay okay. so fixie people are sometimes obsessed with aesthetics. the perfect lines and angles of a track frame, unfettered by brakes or cable guides...

i would definetly say that looks play a big part in how my bike was concieved of. perhaps a bigger part than trifles like, oh, say...comfort. anyway, long story short, i want to know about colored tires. we've all seen the boring handful of color options from conti and michelin. there must be something more exciting than those. i've even heard rumor of pink and gray tires somewhere out there. anyone have any leads or tips?

those multi colored tires from rivendell are badass

comfort be damned but safety? i know i know. brakes and helmets are overrated. but colored tires are dangerous!!! ;)

all colored tires (with no black at all) are dangerous because they have no carbon in them. brandt has a rant about it that someone might be kind enough to link for you. michelin, conti, and the others offering colored tires always recommend them for dry conditions. they recommend the stripy ones with black center tread for 'wet' conditions (although the ideal would be total carbon black if you care about cornering).

that said i have a vredestein fortezza comp with white sidewalls on my front wheel. i wouldnt want a 'colored' tire in back though. they stay all carbon black all the time.

i heard somewhere (maybe brandt also?) that when volkswagon was designing the new 'bug', they tried to give it matching colored tires. apparently it didnt get past the safety testing stage. id like to see some video of that. har.

i'm not picky at all about having tires that are ALL color, but pink sidewalls? *swoon*

These folks have a variety of colors. However, I would not recommend them for fixed gear city riding, especially if your rim has two layers to it.

i doubt , even if true , it has relevance in the real world. sounds like another jobst brandt rant. there used to be some car tires with colored stripes on the tread ... they weren't that popular because some cities banned them because they would sometimes leave colored marks on the road

do you just doubt because it is a brandtianism or is there an argument you would like to share? why dont race cars have bright red tires covered in product logos instead of plain black?

and whats with those greentyres? why not for fixed city riding?

[edit: those tires look like a total scam. what pro would actually want to train on one? they dont list names and i doubt any of those pictures of road cyclists are sponsored by them or even using their tires at all! and the 'performance' link doesnt work nor do they adress the 'urban legends' (that are prbably actually valid) to which the faq refers]

Well Michelin do nice green 'cross tyres, Wildgrippers. And Vredestein do their 26" slick S-Lick in black, red, yellow and blue. No, not all on the same tyre, you style disaster! I've ridden the red and they weren't sketchy at all, more grippy than the Specialized Nimbus and less grippy than the Conti Sport Contact.

greentyres? haahhaha
I heard about them years ago on the job. we talked about it and eventually a buddy bought one to try out on his mtb that he used for work.
You have to watch the instructional video to get them on (unless you have 3-4 strong mofos with you) and the still feel like they could roll off when cornering on the street. + they weighed in at "heavy" to "too damn heavy"
Now, we only tried he off-road stuff. Perhaps the "high-end" road racing tire is a different story, although I find it hard to believe. I think they made a bunch and are dying with a price of $24.99 on a 700x20cm. Certainly they got no pics of pros from the past decade using them, the ones on their site are all early 90s pics or 80s..

I think the Conti's have a version of the GP3000 that has the pink sidewall.

look for the conti GP3000 T-mobile tires. they have pink sidewalls with grey tread.

and BTW, the colored tires are usually made of silica, which is actually better in the rain then carbon black tires. carbon usually makes for a harder rubber, which is why the strip down the middle of really high end tires is black. that allows for the area that gets the most wear to last longer then the sides, that really dont get much wear. however, the sides need stickier rubber, so they use the colored silica. I think I've repeated myself enough. I've made my point (I think)

This is a cool thread. I've been looking for grey tires for my MTB for ages. It came with grey tires, handlebar grips, saddle and all the metal is alu so it looks crap with black tires.

Hope they export to the UK!!!

Matt

I like my orange and black :)

I really liked the grey treaded tires that Conti made but they wear out really FAST! so I don't use them anymore. These days I am running Rivendell Roly Poly 700x27.

I like the looks of Rivendells speedblend tires but can't bring myself to pay that much for bicycle tires.

Tufo makes tube clinchers and tubes in different colors.

Milo

awesome.

i think that the t-mobile coninentals are more plainly referred to as "magenta"...if anyone has an actual photo of one of these tires i'd love to see it before committing 70 bucks to them.

$70 for a tire??? ahahahaha. ha.

Sounds like thats for 2

correct. two. thats pretty much standard at 35/tire for ones that aren't crap.

Veloshop here in Portland has pink and white Schwalbe Stelvios. I'm not sure if that's pink tires and white tires or pink/white tires. Pink is their team color.

Veloshop

colored tires? That isnt very PC is it? I think they would like to be referred to as pigmentally enhanced tires.

YES, i have always been under the impression that colored tires had less carbon, therefore are stickier. High carbon are harder tires.

But i am talking about tires and not tyres ;)

what you could have experienced was the slipperyness of new tires.

The michelin "Courier" model (i kid you not) used to come in awesomely bright green or orange. I loved them for fixed gear as they were a very tough material and the tread lasted for ages...

Unnnnfortunately they stopped making them. Reason unknown.

I haven't seen them anywhere for months, although one could possibly eBay some NOS.

try biketiresdirect.com, they've got plenty of color...pigmentally enhanced tires from vredestein. I think the pink and grey jobs you're talking about were for Team Telekom a way back. They should still be around.