Folks may remember I had two apparently defective Conti Top Contact II's fail on tour this summer. Replaced 'em with Conti Gatorskins.

I just lost my new back Gatorskin this morning on the 10-mile commute in; turns out a fragment of glass had lodged under the rubber of center tread and probably over time punched a hole through the reinforced lining practically big enough to see daylight through.

I must have a rough commute, I ruined a Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tour commuting on my Mt Bike just this past April, but that was with a shard of steel. I have killed a Gatorskin before on that same commute, but that was with an 1 1/2" nail through center tread and out the sidewall.

Not counting a probably-defective Top Contact this summer, this latest Gatorskin is the first premium tire I can recall failing on account of glass.

Anyways, just ordered a set of Marathon Plus, 700x32. Schwalbe says The most puncture resistant pneumatic tire there is.

Guess I'll find out.

Mike

Can you just use a small boot on the Conti Gatorskin? Doesn't sound like the hole was that large. A couple small pieces of Gorilla tape on the inside might give thousands of more miles from that tire

You can try gluing a piece of sidewall from decommissioned tire inside the hole. Cut off the bead and tread. A MTB tire works best. I keep a piece in my patch kit.

Good suggestion, tks.

In four years of commuting I have terminally damaged two Gatorskins, one Marathon Plus Tour, two Conti Town and Countrys and one Panracer Pasela. Obviously it would be cheaper and less hassle if I could extend the life of some of these.

In the meantime, I am curious to try the Marathon Plus. Besides rolling resistance Schwalbe claims low rolling resistance as well. There's a couple of more off-road/world tour oriented tires I'd like to try too, but I cant fit wider than a 32mm tire under fenders on my old Voyageur.

Mike

Why Boot when you can write and get a New tire ?,,Its for when you have no other choice.


The Travel contact is the Conti Adventure Tourink-Trekking tire Not made in 32, just 37& 42

& the 559-47 I've used ,,

One thing it causes is a lot of people offer 'your Knobby tire is worn smooth in the Middle '

& you have to say 'no, the design is like that, the Knobby fringe is for dirt roads .. smooth center on the pavement.'

Yep, same thing with the Marathon Plus Tour and Marathon Mondial; 35 and 40 mm only.

I'm almost tempted to buy a cheapo 35mm tire just to see if I can make the size fit, but as it is I'm running as tight as I care to clearing the fenders with a 32.

I do have great hopes for the upcoming Marathon GT 365...... IF they ever put it out in a 32....

Marathon GT 365 | Schwalbe North America

Mike

Yes, the Gorilla tape boots work well. I've had one in the tire below for over 1000 miles to fix a sidewall cut. But I got another flat this morning and it looks like this time the tire is worn out.

Touring I dont go with out an extra Tire ,, light folding bead I can take 2..

I had a Vredestein Fortezza go like your tire on a charity ride...if it were on the rear I'd have been in trouble, but luckily it was on the front and I could watch the split become longer and longer. I think I made it back to the finish line by the skin of my teeth. That made for a good ride, in spite of lopping of 2/3 of my anticipated mileage.

Brad

Anymore, on any bike I own and not just for touring, I always keep about 8 or 10 inches of the 1" wide Gorilla tape wrapped around one of my tire levers. Takes up no additional room and works well for boots and other quick fixes.

I punched out the sidewall of my gator hardshell. Put a radial patch on the inside, and two ordinary patches on the outside (two scratches), mainly to stabilize the threads.

It lasted me problem-free for a couple thousand miles until a chunk of tread rubber just fell out in a different place. It still was good for a little bit but I didn't like seeing bare threads, so the tire is off until I figure out what to put where the missing chunk of rubber was. But, it was getting down near the bottom of the wear holes anyway.

My Marathon has a big glass cut in it (happened in the first 50 miles or so). I had a boot in it, but the boot wore through a tube, and also wore out.

Right now, the winter bike has a pair of flat-free Tannus tires on it, but I still run pneumatic tires in the summer.

hi there Sharp, don't take this the wrong way, but it really seems that its you thats the constant factor in all these tire shinanigans. I really do think that not noticing that you are running over stuff and/or getting bits of stuff stuck in your tire and not noticing and so the shard works its way deeper and deeper, doing more damage as it goes.
I tend to try as best as I can to keep an eye out for glass etc, and when I do run over it, I always stop and take the minute to run my finger ovr both tires and dislodge bits that once in a while do stick in and would have caused a flat and or more damage to the tire with time.

I certainly notice that when I commute much more in the dark, spring fall, I tend to get stuff stuck in my tires a lot lot more often, and Im convinced its because Im just not seeing the stuff in the dark/dark+wet. Now of course having a nail go through a tire or a piece of metal is a whole diff story, and I've had these happen too, but you know, I have also noticed over the years that into my 50s, I dont notice stuff as well as I used to, ye ol eyes just arent as good as they used to be.

I guess in the end you are certainly riding through areas with bad debris, and if you managed to do in a marathon plus tour---yowser, thats a pretty damn tough (and heavy) tire, so this kind of shows the stuff you are riding through.
Hope you can stop being the tire killer, must be frustrating even if a certain amount of it must be operator error. You are certainly collecting quite a list of tire types that go RIP.....
cheers, and I hope you aren't put out.

ps, how was glass and other road debris overall on your trip this summer?

The tire in the picture never developed any split and the inside surface of the tire looked fine when I removed it. It just doesn't have any rubber in the center of the tread anymore.

I have not heard of this tire... Your looking for a 32 mm, I'll wish for a 60 mm

This summer in the UK/Ireland/France the roads were fine. The Conti Top Contact II's were not

The front one spontaneously developed a sideways bulge, the rear had an ordinary puncture flat from glass, center tread, and then the tire body proceeded to disintegrate on the inside around the puncture site. Pretty sure I got a bad batch, maybe not bonded enough on the inside. That was around 500 miles in, put on new Gatorskins; the following 1,000 miles no problem.

With respect to San Antonio I have this theory that in dry climates assorted debris accumulates along the edges of the road instead of getting washed away as it does even here after heavy rains. That and a general absence of road sweepers in the more dilapidated areas I ride through. Widespread shards of finely broken glass are a given, mostly from beer bottles, this is the West of San Antonio, where drinking and driving is a tradition. Not the whole 10 mile route is like that, just significant parts of it.

The Town and Countries I ran on my Mtn Bike I do not regard as true premium-grade puncture resistant tires, certainly they weren't that way for me, and I would not try to commute on them again here. Likewise the Panracer Paselas I tried on the Voyageur, though highly touted by some, had exceedingly thin sidewalls and one abraded through like the third time I rode them.

I do agree that the Marathon Plus Tours (26x2.0) are about as stout as a bicycle tire can possibly be, practically motorcycle tires. In the past two years I did most of my commuting on my Mt. bike, and that rear tire I killed lasted about a year and a half without a flat and accumulated some significant scars before that terminal tire damage finally happened. I'm hoping for similar performance out of the inbound 7x32 Marathon Plus tires supposed to arrive next week.

Mike

Hey Sharp,
I've pulled pieces of glass and wire out at least four time a year but never a flat.
I ride through urban crap everyday.


Maybe consider tire liners? I use them and feel that since they aren't laminated within the tire, and are free to move, the debris won't reach the tube and cause a flat.
I initially bought them for thorns but they stopped a nail from causing a flat in town.

It's worked for me for about 5 flat free years. (schwalbe regular marathons and Mr. tuffy liners.)

good luck.

I know, the two tires just looked almost the same at their demise.

Brad

to begin with, being another motorcycle rider, I figure that we are generally more attentive to stuff on the road, our line around stuff+potholes etc than folks who only drive cars, so you can't be totally hopeless ;-)

my experience riding in France and walking in the UK goes along with your comment about it being pretty good--which touches on your San Antonio Texas "little rain, little street sweepers and the whole drinking and driving and subsequent tossing of bottles" comments. This all makes complete sense to me.
As a real light guy, under 140, Im generally easy on stuff, but I realize that here in Montreal where street sweeping is pretty good, and in France and places where its never been an issue, its one thing--but as much as I hate the idea of using super heavy Marathon Plus type tires, if I travel in a region or coiuntry where its going to be like your SA commute, and maybe even deserts with thorns etc, then I will not have a choice unless I want to get lots of punctures and tire damage (again, talking about with a touring load, putting a lot more weight on tires)

hope the Marathon Plus 32's end up being a reasonable compromise and work out
cheers
David

Tks for the input all.

Re: Inspecting the tires at the end of the ride... It ain't happening.

If I take an hour or more for the morning commute, as I commonly do, plus stop in 45 minutes at the gym to work out, as I now do, I have to hit the ground running when I get to school, literally every minute counts, some days worse'n others.

Here's my bike early one morning back in July tied to the back railing of the Cambeltown to Ballycastle ferry such as it was (no worries, never mind that blue Scottish sky, Irish rain washed the salt right off )



The front tire is easy to see despite the fender, the back tire not so much, plus I always have panniers on. Surrounded on arrival by a group of kids needing my attention about various minor matters as I generally am, a careful inspection of the tread on the back tire each day is not likely to happen. Departure ain't all that much different, and I'm on the run all day.

I'm just gonna factor in the price of a premium tire once or twice a year as the cost of doing business.

Speaking of premium tires, how come nobody says much any more about Armadillos? I recall 15-20 years back they were the bomb when it came to tough, though hard as a rock to ride. I had forgotten all about them.

https://www.specialized.com/us/en/al...loelite/105836

Mike

typed out an response earlier today but lost it on my phone, so take 2

ya, get ya on time constraints for work etc, and this is why given your route, super tough tires are going to be the way to go. I check for glass after i ride over it cuz it doesnt happen often, and i know its worth the 1 min to do both wheels rather than the X mins it takes to fix a flat, by a long shot.

re armadillos, i had a pair 26x1.5 on my commuter mtn bike for years and years, with hardly any flats in donkeys years. They do have a very stiff sidewall, so they ride hard, I finally changed them to some regular marathons that were more supple (ha some of you say, thats an oxymoron) compared. The armadillos had maybe 7 or 8 years on the bike, still had life in them and I ended up giving them to a neighbours kid for his commuter and they lived on.
I presume they still make them, but from my experience , they were pretty tough

I ordered a couple pairs of the standard Marathon tires, but they sent the Marathon Plus by mistake. By the time I realized the mistake, it was too late to send them back. I compared the weight of the Plus to the standard Marathon and decided to just sell them. I ended up selling one pair on CG, and putting the other pair on my wife's around town bike. They might be a good tough tire for rough commutes, but IMO they are too heavy for touring.

A lot of people say that about the Marathon Pluses, but I've ridden thousands of kms. on them with nary a flat and, as I'm not in a hurry, I don't care about a little extra weight.

Yeah, That was poorly worded. I should have said that "I prefer a lighter tire." They are bomb proof and depending on your needs might be just the right tire for a tour.

Back in the days before Kevlar belts and plastic tire liners, I used good old Tire Savers. I imagine that they would still be of some use today - get rid of the debris out of the tires before it has a chance to work its way in further and cause a flat. I still have a set from the '70s on my old S-10S. I wore them out. I've replaced the 'rub' wire with a pre-bent/formed section of a broken stainless steel spoke.

Armadillos were my main touring tire for a few years. Only one flat in thousands of miles. They were stiff, and I never took corners hard when it was wet, but on the whole I liked them. Impossible to even guess at pressure without a gauge. They felt the same to the hand with forty pounds as with eighty.
The main reason I stopped running them was my big Specialized purge a couple years ago, when they sued that guy in Canada for naming his bike shop Cafe Roubaix. Everything went, from tires to toeclips and even any water bottles made by them.

Since then I've run a variety of tires, and as a heavy rider on crap roads I sympathize with your going through them. I've come to appreciate a lighter more lively tire, but have destroyed quite a few within just a few miles finding a good one.
On my last trip when I wore through a vittoria randonneur cross I bought a Panaracer ribmo in 32mm. I thought it would come off and be replaced by another cross when I got home, but I liked it enough that I just left it on. It might be my new preferred tire for touring and other times its worth taking a weight hit to avoid flats. So far its done more miles than I ever got out of a Randonneur cross with little wear. Its just the dorky name that gets me!