There's your conclusion. Wide tyres won't help you if you're crap off-roading
Have you seen the size of these? These are my new gravel tyres. I haven't used them yet
as you can see. They're fresh out of the box. But I'm going to see if I can be converted
to mountain bike tyres on my gravel bike, basically. You've probably seen mountain bike
style or mountain bike width gravel tires being used in lots of top tier gravel races so unbound
loads of people were using 50 mil tires whereas 45 mil used to be wide on gravel no longer and if
your frame can fit them then apparently we should all be fitting really wide tires like these these
are continentals race king they're 2.2 inches wide luckily the lauf can fit 57 mil tires so
There's a bit of room to spare. The physics is kind of a bit counterintuitive though
Like wider tyres, we've been told for so many years, is slower
And now all of a sudden we're being told they're faster. I mean, there's no way that it's more aero
So can it make up for enrolling resistance? Well, I'm going to try and find out
I've got a race at the weekend. A gravel race. It's called Gritfest
It's in mid Wales. And I've done it for the last three years now
It's one of my favourite gravel events. and I've been a bit torn on what bike to use, what tyres to use
but for the last three years I've used Malauf Segler with the suspension fork at the front
and 45mm Schwalbe G1s. I've been quite happy on it. There's some stages where you feel like you might want a hardtail mountain bike
there's other really fast bits where you feel like it's definitely gravel bike territory
So maybe this will be the best of both worlds. or maybe I've just absolutely ruined my gravel bike
There's only one way to find out, isn't there? I have just realised a slight issue
This front tyre I've put on backwards. You can see around here, it says rotation
There's an arrow which quite clearly goes not the way it's going to spin
That's what you get when you fit tyres at 10 o'clock at night. Okay, we're ready to ride
I am intrigued to see how these tyres perform. We haven't had any issues with them so far, so let's go on a ride
Well, I've ridden about 10 metres so far and I've spotted an issue already
I now get to overlap. So where I actually have my cleats quite far, I have my foot quite far back and even so
yeah, that's going to be really annoying when going slowly and trying to like do any technical
bits Maybe we should just all have hardtail mountain bikes if we want to run mountain bike tires Am I going to move my cleats Am I going to put up with it Or am I going to change my tires
Nah, let's just crack on. Ah, yeah, pretty positive
On stuff like this, they definitely feel nice. I haven't done any like long, really straight, fast bits yet
All the fast bits I've done have actually been a little bit rocky. So I guess find out there whether they're more draggy
whether there's that aero penalty and whether you can feel that. What I would say is, if you have a rock like that
if you're on like a 38 mil or a 40 mil gravel tire
then you're gonna want to go around that. On my 45 mil gravel tyres
you'd be absolutely fine going over it, like no problems. But would I choose to go around it
Yes, probably. If I saw that on the track and there was a clear bit here
I would probably choose to go around it. The wider your tyre, the more you can go over basically
or more it's comfortable to go over. The more you can go over without losing speed
or rolling off the side of it. And what I have found is on these tires
I just don't care as much what I'm riding over. Like on a track like this
there's basically nothing that you can't ride full pelt at. So that's quite nice
But yeah, now to go and find some climbs, because obviously a penalty of using wider tires
is usually additional weight. And if there's not a weight penalty, then it normally means they've got really fragile sidewalls
and you're gonna tear it as soon as you hit anything rocky. So yeah, generally a bit of a weight penalty
Let's go and find out if that makes any difference. Test two, come on big tires
I haven't cleared this hill before. Can I clear them on the mountain bike tires
Let's go. I mean, I'm kind of glad I'm on these ones, to be honest
Oh, that's quite loose there though. oh dear oh dear i didn't choose to be over here
no i still haven't cleared it then oh well if i could spot get going again right we should be all right from there
right why ties be grippy i'm not clipped in Yes Planned my celebration and everything now i can use it to be honest though i would rather
be on these tires for that my opinion at the moment is it depends what gravel you want to be
riding if you want to ride more mountain bikey stuff use mountain bike tires on your gravel bike
although actually then you would just get a hardtail mountain bike and that is something that
I do strongly believe in there's lots of manufacturers pushing you towards a gravel
bike or like trying to tell you that's the greatest thing in existence I do agree they
are great because a lot of people need to ride on the road to get to their off-road however if you
have a road bike potentially an all-road bike if you don't race you can basically get away with
having an all-road bike, you can do dusty trails on that. And then if you want to go off off-road
hardtail mountain bike, which of course you can still use on the road
it just might be a bit more draggy. So is the answer putting mountain bike tires
on your gravel bike? Yes, it probably makes it better, but is a hardtail mountain bike not even better
That's the next question I need to answer. Onwards. Ah well test ride number one done they've done enough to convince me to use them at the weekend
And so today we've sort of been, well, almost purely on either this sort of terrain, like fire roads, or much rockier stuff
And on here, I've been enjoying them. I've been sold. However, I must admit, we haven't done a lot
Well, I haven't, I barely touched any tarmac at all. And I haven't done much fast stuff
I don't think I've gone above like 25 kph the entire day
So it'll be interesting at the weekend to see when things do get a bit faster because there's a real mix of stages
Some of them are quite technical, rocky like some of the stuff we've done today
And then other bits are just half an hour segment go rolling but fast open fire track like this
So yeah, intriguing. From what I've seen so far, not a bad effort from the mountain bike tyres at all
Right, before we get on to the conclusion of this video, please do make sure you subscribe
to the channel because well it really does help us make as much bike content as possible So yeah click the button And without further ado here is the bike that I used for GritFest So this is the setup that I chose to use
And as you will see, it does indeed have the wide tyres still fitted
And in the end, I think that that probably was the right decision for me
because, well, in typical Welsh fashion, the weather took a turn for the worse
and it was no longer quite so dusty. Off-road, and I am 99% sure that the wide tyres are the faster option. Now it's very hard to measure
aerodynamics in the real world, but lots of pros, all those pro riders unbound that you see using
wide tyres, they have had plenty of wind tunnel time. And if they're doing it, then it's quite
easy to imagine that me and you travelling at much lower speeds inevitably, then there's even
more benefit to using wide tyres. So let's get into that a bit deeper. On descents I was definitely
more confident and less wary of my line choices when using these tyres. On technical sections I
was glad of the additional grip and on the road I was pleasantly surprised by how well these race
kings rolled. Wide tyres sound like a nailed on winner then but my choice does come with a few
caveats. I hate saying it depends but it it really does depend. It depends on what gravel you will be
riding. If you just want to do some light tow paths and things like that then fit a 45mm, fit and
forget, you don't need anything wider. However if you want to travel as fast as possible over a whole
range of gravel surfaces then I think basically fit as wide as your frame will allow and that's a
good point actually because a lot of frames won't take tires this wide and well that makes your
decision quite easy doesn't it. Now I do think that bike manufacturers are going to have to listen
to consumers and the science and start making their clearances a lot wider and they have to be
fair a lot of even the race bikes, race gravel bikes that we've seen released this year have got
those wider clearances. That Villeur Rave ID2 springs to mind. Now I say that fit as wide a
tire as possible and then I'm actually going to contradict myself almost immediately because what
I now want to do to this bike is move down to a 50 mil tire. So these are 55 mil, 2.2 inch. I think
a 2.1 inch or 50 mil is going to be the sweet spot for my riding and this bike and I'm hoping
I'm making that decision because I'm hoping that it will eliminate that overlap that you saw I got
earlier. Therefore hopefully I can have all the benefits of big tires without any of the negatives
In conclusion then, wide gravel tires have done enough to convince me that they are a genuine
option rather than just a gimmick. Let me know whether you agree or disagree with my tire choice
down in the comments below as well as any questions that you'd like us to answer on the channel next
We'll see you next time