Tire Mileage (page 3) - CycleBlaze

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Tire Mileage (page 3)

George HallTo George Hall

Schwalbe Marathon Tires; Why I Don't Use Them

I'm replying to myself because it seems the easiest way to do it.  From the responses to this thread it's apparent that many folks use the Schwalbe Marathon tires and have had very good luck with them.  I'm NOT trying to change anyone's mind about their tire choice, but it would be wrong for me to not share this story about why I don't use them. So here we go;

In 2015 I was riding the Transam and found myself in Newton, KS at the Newton Bicycle Shop (NBS).  The NBS is sort-of in the center of the country and they catered to all of the Transam tourists as well as the racers in the annual race across America - so they see a lot of long-distance cyclists every year.  The NBS operated a hostel for touring cyclists and 4 of us were staying the night in the shop.  We all had the shop give our bikes the once-over, including their rather unique bike washing station;

My Bike In The Newton Bike Shop Wash Station

At this point in the tour, I had been riding with and leap-frogging a couple of others with regularity, including Daniel Wolf of Colorado.  Daniel is seen on the left in the above picture, and Newton Bike Shop's (NBS) extraordinary wrench Mike is shown on the right.  Daniel had researched tires in advance of this tour and had purchased new Schwalbe Marathon tires for the coast-to-coast ride.  So he was very distraught when the NBS folks pointed out that he had a blister on the sidewall of his rear tire - if he continued with it, the blister would eventually blow out.  The tread on the tire was barely worn, but the blister made it worthless.  It was even more upsetting when the NBS folks told us that they had a collection of about 100 Schwalbe Marathon tires with blisters on the sidewall that they had removed from touring cyclist's bikes.  It was their recommendation to use the Panaracer Tourgard Plus tires in lieu of the Schwalbe Marathon - I didn't "discover" these tires on my own, instead I took their advice and have been happy with it.  

But my story isn't done yet.  The Transam ride was 2015, and 2 years later in 2017 I was preparing for a tour of the Western Express route (San Francisco, CA to Pueblo, CO).  I was equipped with new Panaracer Tourgard Plus tires, and my riding partners (sister & brother-in-law) were researching tires and decided to buy the Schwalbe Marathons.  I relayed my Transam story to them, but we both felt that Schwalbe would have surely fixed that problem by now.  We reasoned that it was probably a bad batch of rubber mix or something like that at the time, and that 2 years later all should be fine.  But just to be certain, my brother-in-law checked and was assured by his tire supplier that the tires he was getting were "freshly" ordered and were not old stock. So we thought we had done due diligence and the tires would be fine, after all we were only riding 1,600 miles on this tour.   Well, you have already guessed the outcome of this story; we took a rest day in Gunnison, CO and my brother-in-law took his bike to a local shop for some adjustments and guess what they found?  A blister on the sidewall made the tire worthless after only a bit over 1,000 miles.   The only wider tire they had in stock was a knobby, so he had to finish out the tour on that. 

I know many people ride on Schwalbe Marathons and apparently are getting good usage from them.  But, after having experienced the above, I simply can't bring myself to try them - it would be "my fault" if I did so and had a blister develop on the sidewall.   So now you know my story.  

May you get 10,000 miles of no-flat riding on whatever brand of tires you ride,

Buddy

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2 years ago
Wayne EstesTo George Hall

Interesting story. I don't doubt that you are telling the truth about the experience of the bike shop in Newton, Kansas. That shop sees far more long distance touring cyclists than most bike shops, so their experience is useful.

I have used Schwalbe Tires exclusively for almost 20 years now. Before that I used Continental Top Touring tires. I switched to Schwalbe tires because I was getting too many punctures on the Conti tires. The Schwalbe Marathon tires got significantly fewer punctures than Conti Top Touring tires.

5 years ago I switched my touring tires from 40mm Schwalbe Marathon to 40mm Schwalbe Marathon Racer. The Racers have less tread that saves 15 ounces of rotating weight and noticeably reduces rolling resistance. There seems to be no tradeoff for me. The lighter, faster Marathon Racer tires are no more prone to punctures than the heavier, slower Marathon tires. I have an unused pair of Marathon tires hanging in the shed but will never use them. I like the Marathon Racer tires so much better.

When I switched to Schwalbe, Conti tires had a reputation for sidewall failures. But I don't recall ever having a sidewall failure with either brand. Maybe I'm more gentle than most touring cyclists, not scraping sidewalls against big rocks and curbs. Or maybe I'm just extremely lucky to avoid road hazards and defective tire batches.

It would be interesting to know if Marathon sidewalls are still failing 7 years later. Was it just a defective batch, or are they still bad now?

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2 years ago
George HallTo Wayne Estes

Wayne; you asked "Was it just a defective batch, or are they still bad now?"   I don't know the answer to that, but based on all the folks who seem to use and like them, I'd guess it was just a defective batch.  But it happened again 2 years after I first became aware of the defect - my riding partner was told that his tires were recently-ordered stock (not 2-year old stock), but you never know for sure.   So I have been reluctant to try them, especially since the Panaracer Tourgard Plus tires got me coast-to-coast with no flats last year.

Others seem to love them, so I'm going with it was probably just a bad batch.  But I personally saw the sidewall blister happen twice, 2 years apart, so I'm not using them.  

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2 years ago
Kelly IniguezTo George Hall

Do you know what model of Marathon they were running? Just curious. I'm  a long time  Marathon Racer fan.

Jacinto had a similar problem with a failure on a brand new Compass Slumgullion tire. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for photographic evidence. The tire lasted only a few miles. He still had the packaging on his bike. Getting a refund was no problem. 

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2 years ago
John PescatoreTo George Hall

I've read and posted on the Bike Forum site for many years. The General Cycling, Road Cycling and Touring forums have a pretty high volume of posts and various tire life threads pop up constantly.

Pretty much no matter what tire brand is brought up, someone has had a sidewall defect issue. Personally, for many years I just bought the cheapest tires and only once had a sidewall issue, while doing a multi-day ride in Ohio. I can't even remember what brand.  As I've gotten older and wiser, I've migrated to better tires across a smaller set of brands, still never had a sidewall problem.

In recent years, my high volume road bike has been on Continental GP5000s and my touring/gravel Jamis bike has been on Schwalbe Marathons (as had the Trek 520 touring bike before the Jamis) still never had a single sidewall issue. The Marathons are higher rolling resistance but do last longer and flat less often in my experience.

I kinda think sidewall defects are a low occurrence issue equally spread across tire brands. Not really much in it for any major brand to have an actually design/fab issue and not fix it over a long period of time.

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2 years ago
George HallTo Kelly Iniguez

Kelly - they were both using the touring version of the Schwalbe Marathon that has the extra flat protection layer - I'm not certain what the model name is, is it the Supreme?  

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2 years ago
Mark BoydTo George Hall

The Schwalbe  Marathon Plus is the tire with the extra protective layer.  The Schwalbe  Marathon Supreme is a very good tire with low rolling resistance. They couldn't be more different!

I used Marathon Pluses for one cross USA tour:  https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=3XQ&doc_id=9649&v=cU

On that tour, a day without a flat was a good day!

I started near San Francisco and didn't get a flat tire till I was almost out of California. Then I got more flat tires tire than I'd gotten on all my other  (half a dozen)  cross USA rides combined! I threw those horrible tires away before I got home. Their rolling resistance was horrible and the nature of that  flat preventing layer was that it became a flat delaying and later causing layer. The last flat tire I had using that pair was from a  tire wire that was picked up in California and caused a flat in Louisiana!

I used Marathon  Supreme tires on the back of my Giro because they could be run at relatively low pressure for extra comfort. They really are nice tires, but after losing two of them to sidewall  cuts on two different tours, I stopped using them. 

I have used Conti touring tires - Top Touring, Top Touring 2000, Travel Contact, and, currently, Contact Travel.  for something close to 100,000 miles of touring and, while they are not perfect, have found them to be very good tires. On tour, I get one full summer tour - as much as 4500 miles -  on the rear and two on the front on my upright bike. The original Top Touring tires used a harder rubber which caused them to wear better but not handle as well as  the three more recent Conti touring tires.

Not all of my touring tires are made by Conti.  My two SWB recumbents have the excellent  Schwalbe Marathon Racer tires on their front (406) wheels and 26x1.75 Conti Travel  Contact on their rear wheels. 

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2 years ago
Keith AdamsTo John Pickett

I had ample opportunity to practice unmounting and re-mounting a 20" Marathon yesterday, thanks to a recurring flat.  At least it was on the front wheel rather than the rear!  Thanks for the link to the videos on how to do the re-mounting easily: they paid off handsomely.

I need to put a couple cotton balls into my permanent collection of roadside emergency supplies, although I'm not altogether certain they'd have helped yesterday.  I haven't yet been able to correlate the location of the pinholes with any obvious defect in the tire casing, although they were in the general vicinity of (what I think is) an old wound in the tread.  

There's a teeny tiny irregularity inside the tire at that point (I could poke a knife blade all the way through and see the tip emerge from the tread) but none of the inner steel wires in the tire body seemed to project into the tube.  And the hole doesn't seem like it's big enough for the tube to work its way in and develop a hole through working against the sides of the cut.

There's a complicating factor in that the rim strip had also shifted in that same area, partially exposing one of the holes where the spoke head can be accessed.  But the holes in the tube aren't on the part of the tube that lies against the rim strip, so far as I can tell.

The tire in question spent the first 3,000 miles of its life on the rear wheel and must have suffered some indignities during that time- there are several small cuts and nicks in the tread.  I just swapped them at the start of this year and had hoped to make them last through the remainder of my training time- another three months or so.

But, since I have a spare on hand (and another on the way), I may go ahead and replace that tire earlier than expected (and then again, three months from now) so as to eliminate any possibility that I missed something when I inspected the inner surface from my oh-so-comfortable perch on an irrigation pipe at the side of the road yesterday afternoon.

It's not really going to be a problem that the on-hand spare is of the 1.35" width variety, where the tire I plan to use on tour is 1.5".  In fact, it'll make training easier because the 1.5s don't easily fit through the brake pads while fully inflated, but a 1.35 should.  That will save me the hassle of having to deflate and reinflate the tire every time I put the bike on the car rack, when I want to do a ride that doesn't start and finish in my own driveway.

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2 years ago
Keith AdamsTo John Pickett

Cotton balls in action!  Let's play "Spot the Problem", using yesterday's tire as the basis.  In the field I could sorta feel, and kinda see a spot that could maybe, might have been the cause of my issues but it wasn't obvious.

This morning I dragged a cotton ball all the way around the inside of the tire, and guess what?  It snagged at exactly the place I was looking at yesterday.

Hard to notice anything here, although there is a wisp of cotton already marking the suspicious spot.
The circle should make it more obvious.
A macro close-up shot shows there's definitely something going on. The diagonal line slanting up and to the left is where I pulled out a single thread of the tire casing, while I was futzing around looking for the problem at the side of the road. There was a tiny end of it projecting into the void space, which was probably what drew my attention to the area during visual inspection.
From such seemingly trivial things as this do recurring problems emanate.

Here's the outside (tread) of the tire at that point.

The tread at the point of the snag. Yes there's a hole but it doesn't look so bad. It's exaggerated here because I'm pinching the tire to make the hole obvious.
There's another spot (just above my thumbnail) where the tire's obviously been punctured but the cotton did not snag on it...
... despite the fact that it was an obviously worse puncture. Go figure.

Given that there are TWO perforations I think this tire is done for, despite having probably half its tread left.  There are other reasons beyond loss of tread and sidewall failure to scrap a tire.

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2 years ago
Rich FrasierTo Keith Adams

I might be the only cyclist on the planet that didn’t know the cotton ball trick.  Thanks for the clear explanation and pictures.  I’m definitely adding a couple of cotton balls to my touring toolkit!

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2 years ago