You asked for it… Many customers requested our Barlow Pass with the Endurance casing. It makes sense – 700C x 38 is a versatile size. If your rides are littered with glass, steel wires or goatheads, the Endurance casing is going to be your friend. You get a tire with much of the speed and comfort of our other Rene Herse tires, yet it’s considerably tougher than the Standard or Extralight casings.

The Antelope Hill is another prime candidate for the Endurance casing. Call it 700C x 55 or 29″ x 2.3″ as you wish – it’s a tire for monstercross and mountain bikes that are ridden on gravel roads (and paved ones, too).

Most of the time, the sheer volume of this tire (and associated low pressure) will ward off sidewall cuts and punctures. Yet by their nature, the Antelopes invite you to take them places you wouldn’t go otherwise. And then the extra protection of the Endurance casing can be great reassurance…

These Rene Herse tires are available with Endurance casings:

• 650B x 48 Juniper Ridge (knobby)
• 700C x 38 Barlow Pass
• 700C x 38 Steilacoom (knobby)
• 700C x 42 Hurricane Ridge (knobby)
• 700C x 44 Snoqualmie Pass
• 700C x 55 Antelope Hill

Quantities of the new models are limited for now, until production catches up with demand. Click here for more information.

Rene Herse tires are available in many widths, with two tread patterns and four casings. All this so you can find tires that are ideally suited to how and where you ride. Today, let’s look at the different casings. Which is best for you? Continue Reading →

We like Road.cc, the British web site, because they really ride the products they test. They’ve got a number of testers, and their opinions are refreshingly unbiased and honest. At the end of each test, they ask their reviewers “Would you buy this product?” and “Would you recommend this product to a friend?”

Recently, they reviewed our Juniper Ridge dual-purpose knobbies, and tester Stu Kerton replied “Yes” to both questions. His summary explains why:“The Juniper Ridge has been designed to work just as well on the road as it does off the beaten track. I was sceptical, but to be honest they are pretty good, giving a boost to your average speed on those tarmac sections between the tracks and trails.”

Grip on gravel and in mud impressed him, too: “Cornering on hard-packed gravel, the Junipers had just the right level of grip for the knobbles to dig into the gravel so you could blast round at speed. […] They grip well on soft mud and the tread doesn’t seem to hang onto any dirt either, shedding it before it can become compacted between the knobbles. The only place they did suffer a bit was on wet, sticky chalk, which could clog up the tread.” But then, I suspect that any tire will clog up in that type of sticky mud…

It’s exciting when testers enjoy our tires as much as we do. Rather than tell you more about the test, why not read the full review for yourself at road.cc?

Autumn means colder temperatures and rainy weather, here in the Cascade Mountains and in many parts of the world. More than ever, the grip of our tires is on our minds. Why do all Rene Herse tires have black tread? Colorful treads can look nice, but black rubber offers the best grip.

That is one reason why all car tires today are black. In the early days of motoring, tires were made from natural rubber, which is white or gray. (That is why the famous Michelin man is white…) By the 1910s, it was becoming apparent that white rubber didn’t last well, and tire makers discovered that adding carbon black to the rubber made it last much longer. As a positive side effect, it increased the tire’s grip, too – and it made the tires black. Even today, you can get car tires in many colors, but they are considered a novelty and not intended for daily use, much less for performance driving.

It may come as a surprise that the color of rubber and plastic affects many other properties, too. For example, gray resins are stronger than black or colored varieties. That is why the frames of Berthoud saddles are gray. With rubber, blue appears to be the least durable – which is why the blue hoods for old Mafac brake levers are almost unfindable today. And red backpacks fade far more quickly than other colors…

The reason is simple: Colors are additives, and often, surprisingly large amounts of the colorants are needed to create the color. This often changes the physical properties of the raw material. The black color of tires works the opposite way: Carbon black is an additive chosen for its performance-enhancing properties, and it just happened to change the color to black.

Before we made our Rene Herse tires, we rode tires from many makers. When I was racing in the 1990s, Vittoria introduced their ‘Professional All Weather’ model with softer green rubber on the shoulders. This was supposed to be grippier when leaning the bike into wet corners. It seemed like the perfect tire for Seattle’s infamous rainy season.

We tried the ‘All Weathers,’ and immediately scared ourselves: They seemed to grip fine at first, while we were still riding on the black center tread. Leaning further, grip was lost very suddenly as we transitioned to the green rubber. Then TOUR magazine did one of their famous tire tests. They measured tire grip on wet roads and confirmed that the ‘All Weather’ was less grippy than Vittoria’s standard, all-black tires! We never found out what the Italians were thinking when they developed these tires. I recall a big marketing push with all kinds of colors around that time, but it didn’t last long. Today, all Vittoria tires have black tread again.

Later, we imported the first supple, wide 650B tires from Japan. Made to resemble classic French rubber, the first model was available only in red and white. We loved the supple casings, but we found that in the wet, the white version was noticeably lacking in traction. Riding the red model, we also felt the grip bleed away earlier than we expected. We requested a special run of tires with black tread, and those gripped much better.

Of course, black tread alone isn’t a guarantee for excellent traction. I recall one tire from a small company that would spin when accelerating from a stop on cold, wet (but clean) pavement. Clearly, not all rubber is made equal.

When we first talked to the engineers at the tire factory in Japan about the tires we wanted to make, they showed us many beautiful colors. There was a very attractive tea green… When we asked about the performance, the engineers left no doubt: “Black has the best grip.” What about the colored treads? “It’s all about fashion. It allows small companies to offer tires that are different from the mainstream.”

There is nothing wrong with fashion, but for us, performance is more important. On the steep, twisty descents of the Cascade Mountains, we need tires that grip. And fortunately, Panaracer’s top-level tread rubber is among the grippiest you’ll find anywhere.

Of course, there is much more to making a tire grip than just the tread compound. Our herringbone tread pattern has many ribs that interlock with the road surface. When we tested the herringbone tread back-to-back with slick tires, the difference was very noticeable. A supple casing also grips better because it keeps its tread in contact with the road surface. A stiffer tire will bounce more and have less traction. For our Rene Herse tires, we’ve optimized all these parameters to offer you tires with more grip than just about any other tire – on dry and wet roads.

Even with the best tires, riding in Autumn and Winter requires extra caution. There are many factors that decrease traction when it’s wet and/or cold:

• Cold rubber is less grippy – your traction is reduced when the temperature drops. This is quite significant, especially once the temperature drops below 10°C (50°F).
• On wet roads, tread patterns that interlock with the road surface offer the greatest benefits. With the right tires, you can lean quite far into corners (top photo) – if the asphalt is clean.
• After the first rain, the water mixes with dust, oil and other airborne pollution to form a very slippery surface layer. Use extreme caution when it hasn’t rained in a long time.
• Your tires stay wet for a while after you ride through water. Remember this when you cross a wet patch on the road: Your tires may still be wet in the next corner, even if the road surface there is dry.
• Painted traffic markings on the asphalt can be very slippery in the wet. Metal surfaces – grates, manhole covers, railroad tracks, plates covering trenches at construction sites – are even worse. Avoid them if you can. If you must ride over them, straighten your bike before you reach them, so you aren’t leaning while you are on the slippery surface.
• Scan the road for shiny oil that has dripped from cars with leaky crankcases.
• Tire sealants that use latex – which means most brands – won’t seal when it’s cold. (Latex doesn’t cure well when it’s colder than 10°C/50°F.)
• Snow and ice require special considerations.

We enjoy riding our bikes year-round, so we’ve developed components that perform well in wet and cold conditions, not just when it’s dry and warm. With the right equipment and skills, riding in all weather can be safe and enjoyable.

Further reading:

• Why a herringbone tread provides more traction.
• More information about Rene Herse tires.

P.S.: I apologize for re-using the same opening photo. There aren’t many that show us cornering hard in the rain – when it’s wet and cold, we prefer keep going to stay warm, rather than stop for photos!

How fast are our tires? We know that the casing, and not the width, determines a tire’s speed. When I rode Paris-Brest-Paris on 42 mm-wide tires (above), I knew that I wasn’t giving up any speed over narrower rubber. But in absolute terms, how fast are our Rene Herse tires?

Manufacturers’ claims always are taken with a grain of salt… So let’s look at two independent tests of our tires. They still list the old ‘Compass’ name, but the tires tested were the same as the current Rene Herse models.

The respected German magazine TOUR found our Bon Jon Pass as one of the five fastest tires they’ve ever tested. TOUR tested the Standard model. The much more supple and speedy Extralight would have fared even better.

TOUR’s test rig is a pendulum that rolls the tires back and forth. The longer the pendulum swings, the lower the rolling resistance.

Like all tests that don’t include a rider, this test measures only losses due to deformation of the tire (hysteretic losses). In the real world, there are also suspension losses as vibrations are absorbed by the bike and the rider. Wide tires vibrate less than narrow ones, so they tend to roll even faster than these tests suggest.

In any case, the result is clear: In TOUR’s test, the Bon Jon Pass is one of the fastest tires in the world, closely matching the best racing tires. Being 9-12 mm wider than the racing tires doesn’t make the Bon Jon Pass any slower.

What’s the best gravel tire? – 10 models in comparison

How about comparing our tires to other wide tires? Gran Fondo magazine recently tested ten popular gravel tires. Rolling resistance (and puncture resistance) were tested by Schwalbe’s engineers in the company’s test lab.

Our Barlow Pass Extralight had the lowest rolling resistance (red bar) of all tires in the test. (100% is the best in the test.)

The engineers at TOUR and Schwalbe are among the most respected in the cycling world. Their tests show that our casings are among the most supple, and roll as fast or faster than the best tires in the world.

On real roads, the advantage of supple tires is even greater: Not only do they absorb less energy as they flex, they also vibrate less. And that reduces the suspension losses. Both effects work in tandem: Supple tires have less tire deformation and less vibration. As a result, the greater speed of supple, wide tires becomes very noticeable when you ride on real roads. When you try different tires back-to-back, you realize that tires are the biggest performance upgrade you can make to your bike.

A little more about the Gran Fondo test: The testers were impressed by the “superb levels of comfort” of the Barlow Pass and called it “almost as nice as flying.” They also were surprised how much grip the supple tires offered on gravel and dry dirt roads. Of course, reading that makes us happy, even if it just confirms what we’ve found in our own testing.

Further reading:

• Click here to read the full Gran Fondo article.

Tubeless tires have changed what we can do on a bike. When the terrain is really rough, not having to worry about pinch flats allows us to run lower tire pressure for more comfort, more traction and more speed. (The speed comes from the lower pressure on rough surfaces, not from the tubeless setup itself.)

Setting up tires tubeless can be a hassle – and high-performance tires require more diligence yet. Everything that makes supple tires so fast and comfortable also makes them harder to set up tubeless: The ultra-thin sidewalls aren’t air-tight, and the tires are so floppy that the bead can be hard to seal against the rim. Supple tires need sealant to close those microscopic pores in the casing and to constantly seal the tire against the rim.

There are many tricks to setting up tires tubeless, and the right choice of sealant is one of them. Many sealants are intended for mountain bike tires with stiff casings that are covered with a thick layer of rubber, making them airtight on their own. The sealant is only intended to close small punctures, not to make the tire itself airtight and seal it against the rim. Those sealants can work OK with supple high-performance tires, but we wanted a better solution.

Over the last two years, we’ve worked with Panaracer in Japan to develop a sealant that is specifically formulated for the supple sidewalls of Rene Herse tires. (The sealant works equally well with Panaracer tires and other brands.)

The Seal Smart sealant uses natural latex and walnut shells to make the tire airtight and seal it against the rim. Thanks to these ingredients, it’s non-toxic and low in allergens. Clean-up is easy, too.

Most of all, it works really well. With every tire we’ve set up so far, the tire sealed almost instantly and held its air for weeks without re-inflating. We’ve tried it on tires that were returned under warranty because the sidewall didn’t seal. (This happens very rarely when the rubber coating is a bit too thin.) Bubbles appeared on the casing, and the tires continued to lose air. With the new Seal Smart, two tiny bubbles appeared at first, but the tires sealed fine. We wiped off the bubbles, and they didn’t reappear – the tires were ready to ride.

Of course, every installation is different, and we cannot guarantee a successful tubeless installation. Especially with supple tires, it pays to be extra-diligent when distributing the sealant inside the tire to make sure it goes into every crack. And make sure to shake the sealant vigorously for a minute or more to distribute the solids really well: If you’re just injecting white water into the tire, it won’t seal…

The new Panaracer Seal Smart comes in 500 ml (17 oz) bottles – enough to set up 4-6 tires and replenish your sealant frequently. It is in stock now.

Further information:

• Rene Herse tires and Panaracer sealant
• Tips for setting up tires tubeless
• Why tubeless tires aren’t faster than tubes

We developed the Endurance casings for our Rene Herse tires based on requests from gravel racers like Ted King (above), who need tires for truly harsh conditions. A race like Dirty Kanza traverses 200 miles of sharp stones in the Flint Hills of Kansas. The lead racers travel at high speeds in densely packed pelotons, unable to see the road ahead – and thus unable to avoid hitting big and sharp rocks. The event becomes a race of attrition. If you flat and are lucky, your plug holds, your CO2 cartridge inflates the tire, and you can chase back on. More likely, you see the peloton vanish into the distance.

It’s for this type of event that we’ve introduced our Endurance casing. It’s a beefed-up version of our renowned Extralight casing: We use the same ultra-thin and ultra-supple threads, but push them closer together to obtain a denser weave. Then we add a puncture protection layer from bead to bead that reinforces not only the tread area against punctures, but also the sidewalls against cuts.

For even tougher conditions, we offer the Endurance Plus casing with thicker threads for even more cut resistance, plus the same puncture protection layer as the Endurance casing. It’s probably overkill for most rides and races, but there are times where you gladly give up a little speed for the peace of mind of not having to think about your tires at all.

We shipped a small quantity of Rene Herse tires with Endurance casings as soon as possible, so racers could use them in Dirty Kanza and other races. This also allowed us to get valuable feedback from the field.

Ted King (leading the pack in the photo above) rode the Hurricane Ridge Endurance Plus to a formidable 8th place in this year’s Dirty Kanza against international competition of professional riders. In the past, the ‘King of Gravel’ had suffered from flats in every edition of this epic race – but not this year.

Others had similar experiences. One customer wrote:

“I used the Steilacoom Endurance tires and had no problems or flats on the DK200 course this year. I did not feel that I had to brake and descend with extra caution, but felt confident to just let them roll. I will now continue to ride these tires, dropping the pressure for added comfort and better rolling resistance, and see where the limits are.”

Another racer commented:

“I would like to let you know on how amazed I was in yesterday’s Dirty Kanza riding your Steilacoom tires with the Endurance casing. Hassle free. No flats, no nothing, all good, and supple riding!”

And:

“Thank you for the expedited shipping so I got the tires in time for the race. You guys are as awesome as your tires…”

The first shipment of Rene Herse tires with Endurance casings sold out almost immediately. We’ve now received another shipment, and all models are back in stock.

We are also introducing two new models, the 700C x 44 mm Snoqualmie Pass Endurance and Endurance Plus with our smooth all-road tread. For dry rides and races where you won’t encounter mud, these tires are a great choice. They complement the knobby 700C x 42 mm Hurricane Ridge to offer a quiver of tires that will handle all conditions. They are ideal not just for racing, but also for adventures where you don’t know what you will encounter.

In addition to our Standard and Extralight tires, we now offer the following tires with Endurance and Endurance Plus casings:

• 700C x 38 mm Steilacoom knobby (Endurance)
• 700C x 42 mm Hurricane Ridge knobby (Endurance; Endurance +)
• 700C x 44 mm Snoqualmie Pass all-road (Endurance; Endurance +)
• 650B x 48 mm Juniper Ridge knobby (Endurance)

Click here for more information about our Rene Herse tires.

Photo credit: Dustin Michelson/Gravelguru (Photo 1).

Working with Ted King, winner of last year’s Dirty Kanza gravel race, has added a new perspective to our R&D. We’ve got a lot of experience riding gravel, even racing it, but today’s mass-start races aren’t the same as exploring the Cascade Mountains on forest roads, or even racing the 363-mile cross-state Oregon Outback during the early days of gravel racing.

Like all racers, Ted wants the fastest bike he can get, and supple tires make a greater difference than almost any other component choice. Depending on the surface, Ted has been racing our 42 mm Snoqualmie Pass (Landrun 100, 2nd place), 35 mm Bon Jon Pass (Belgian Waffle Ride, 3rd place) and 38 mm Steilacoom knobbies (Epic 150, 1st place).

For Dirty Kanza and similar big events, Ted asked for a tougher tire. When you race in a peloton, you don’t see where you are going. It’s inevitable that you’ll hit some rocks and holes that you’d go around if you were riding by yourself or in a small group. And unlike the smooth gravel often found in New England (above), some of the rocks in Kansas are awfully rough and sharp.

How do you make a sturdier tire without giving up the speed and wonderful ride of our Rene Herse tires? For our new Endurance tires, we started with our Extralight casing, but pushed the threads closer together to make a denser weave for improved cut resistance. Then we added a thin protection layer all around the tire that further enhances cut-resistance and puncture protection. The darker tan color distinguishes this casing from our other offerings.

By using the same ultra-fine threads as our Extralight casing, the new Endurance tires give up only a little speed. In return, you get significantly improved resistance to rock cuts and flats. And since we start with the Extralight casing, the Endurance tires don’t weigh a ton either – no more than our already very light Standard casings. As part of our testing, Ted King has been riding prototypes with the new Endurance casing. In fact, he used them to win the Epic 150 gravel race a few weeks ago.

The Endurance casing is also a great choice for adventures where you don’t know what to expect. It’s a perfect complement to our dual-purpose knobbies that offer great performance on pavement, gravel, mud and even snow. Combine the two, and there is little your bike won’t be able to handle.

For the punishing conditions of the world’s toughest gravel races, we’ve developed the Endurance Plus casing. This uses much stronger, thicker threads, plus the same protection layer as the Endurance casing. This is a tire you might choose when the race will be a game of attrition…

Gravel racers also tell us that they need wider tires, but most modern cyclocross and many gravel bikes only fit 44 mm tires (if they are smooth) or 42 mm knobbies. We already have our 700C x 44 mm Snoqualmie Pass, and now they are joined by the 700C x 42 mm Hurricane Ridge dual-purpose knobbies.

Hurricane Ridge is a great climb in the Olympic Mountains of Washington that offers two options: paved or muddy gravel. With the new dual-purpose knobbies, you’ll feel equally at home on both routes.

All this adds up to a lot of new tire models in the Rene Herse Cycles program:

• 700C x 38 mm Steilacoom Endurance
• 700C x 42 mm Hurricane Ridge Standard
• 700C x 42 mm Hurricane Ridge Extralight
• 700C x 42 mm Hurricane Ridge Endurance
• 700C x 42 mm Hurricane Ridge Endurance Plus
• 650B x 48 mm Juniper Ridge Endurance

With Dirty Kanza approaching, we’ve airshipped the first of the new tires from Japan to give riders and racers additional options as they prepare for this epic (and other) events. Quantities are very limited for now. If you need your tires for a race soon, select an expedited shipping method and add “Tires for Kanza” in the note field, and we’ll send out your order as quickly as possible – usually the same day. (In fact, most orders are shipped the same day.)

All our other models are in stock, too. Together with the new tires, they provide a full quiver to suit most riders and most events. Click here for more information or to order.
Photo credits: Ansel Dickey (Photos 1, 3, 10), Landrun 100 (Photo 2), Dustin Michelson (Photo 5), Ted King (Photo 8).

Like many cyclists, we love climbs, but we live for twisty downhills. The feeling of the bike leaning deep into a turn is something that is hard to explain, yet easy to enjoy.

This video clip was taken on a short descent toward Lake Washington. We know this road well, and even though we aren’t taking any risks, it’s always fun.

Obviously, one key component in making descents fun and safe are good tires. What makes a tire corner well? Here are some factors that determine cornering grip on pavement.

Most important is a round profile. That way, the tire’s behavior is always the same, no matter how far you lean the bike.

Some older tires were taller in the center – I believe the idea was that you’d roll on a narrower portion of the tire, which was thought to be faster. This caused strange transitions as the effective radius of the tire changed as you leaned the bike. Some tires have a squared-off profile. That is even worse, as amount of rubber on the road decreases dramatically as you lean the bike into the corner. Fortunately, most ‘road’ tires today are round.

Next in the order of importance is the rubber compound. A grippy rubber compound will make the tire stick better to the road surface.

In the past, we had to choose between grippy rubber that wore out quickly, or durable tires that provided heart-stopping moments when they suddenly lost traction and skipped sideways.
Today, the best rubber compounds combine excellent grip with long life, giving us the best of both worlds.

The width of the tire is also very important. More rubber on the road provides more grip – that is why racing motorbikes use wide tires.

On bicycles, there are two reasons why wider tires grip better. They run at lower pressures. This allows them to stay in contact with the road surface better. When a narrow tire skips over a bump, it loses traction. The suppleness of the casing plays a role, too: A tire that absorbs bumps better also has more traction.

Reason 2 why wide tires have more grip: The tread rubber interlocks with the irregularities of the road surface. A wider tires can interlock with more surface irregularities, so it has more grip. (No. 2 appears to be the main reason why racing motorbikes have wide tires.)

Tread patterns also contribute to the grip of a tire, or reduce it. Micro-knobs that squirm under cornering loads should be avoided. The most grippy treads are designed to provide as many interlocking edges as possible. This is especially important on wet roads, where the pure friction between rubber and asphalt is much reduced. But you’ll notice the effect even in dry corners.

Why do racing motorbikes use slick tires? Motorbikes are too heavy and too powerful to use fine ribs – they’d wear off immediately. Instead, they use very soft rubber compounds. The heavy weight and high speed of the motorbike pushes the tire into the road, thus creating the interlock with the road surface. The downside is that racing motorbike tires wear out very quickly.

Tire pressure is important, too. It’s a compromise: Pump up your tires too hard, and they’ll skip over bumps and lose traction. Run the pressure too low, and the tire can collapse during hard cornering. If your pressure is just a bit too low, you’ll just notice that the bike is running wide. If it’s much too low, the sidewall can suddenly collapse, which isn’t a good feeling at all. Fortunately, there is a wide range of ‘OK’ pressures between these extremes.

Temperature is important, too. Rubber becomes more sticky when it’s warm. On a cold day, the grip from your tires will be much reduced – even if you don’t run into ice.

Racing motorbikes warm up their tires for optimum grip, but cyclists are too light to generate significant heat when cornering.

At least as important as the outright grip of your tires is the feedback they provide as you corner. Narrow tires provide very little, but wide tires with good tread patterns give you feedback of how much grip you have in reserve. It’s subtle, but once you know what it feels like, you can sense whether you have a lot of grip in reserve, or whether you are approaching the limit. The best way to learn what this feels like is to ride on slippery surfaces – mud or snow – where you can slide at low speeds and (usually) recover from the slide. But that is a topic for another post…

In summary, to corner with confidence, you want a tire that is round, wide, supple, with a tread pattern that interlocks with the road surface, a rubber compound that grips well – and ideally, you’ll ride on a warm or hot day.

At Rene Herse Cycles, we love descending, so we’ve optimized our tires for all these factors – except the weather. You’ll have to provide that yourself.

When Ted King recently won the Epic 150 gravel race in Missouri on our Rene Herse Steilacoom tires, many were surprised that he ran knobbies on a fast course. But there were a few muddy corners where the knobs would provide valuable grip, and Ted knew that on the smooth portions of the course, he wouldn’t give up performance, thanks to our innovative tread pattern.

When we developed our ‘dual-purpose’ knobbies, I wanted tires that roll and corner as well on pavement as they grip in mud. I can see you shaking your head: “Impossible!” For grip in mud, you need knobs. On pavement, knobs flex as the tire rolls, consuming energy and slowing the bike. And when leaning the bike into a paved turn, knobs squirm, which reduces grip and makes cornering unpredictable.

That is why for most of the history of cycling, there were knobby tires for cyclocross, and smooth tires for the road. Nobody thought of riding knobbies on the road…

When mountain bikes became popular in the 1980s, knobby tires were part of their rugged appeal, but most entry-level mtbs were ridden around town. Tire makers started to think about making knobbies that perform better on pavement. The solution was obvious: Make them less ‘knobby’ by spacing the knobs more closely. In the center of the tire, the knobs often were linked to form a continuous ‘center ridge.’ This distributed the rider’s weight over more knobs and reduced the squirm. On pavement, this worked to a degree – these tires squirmed less, but they were still no high-performance tires.

There was a drawback: When you really need knobs to dig into soft soil, mud or snow, the closely spaced knobs clog up. You spin as you would on a slick tire. These days, you don’t find many tires with center ridges and densely spaced knobs any longer, because they are worse than road tires on pavement, and just as bad in mud.

The next idea was to remove the knobs in the center of the tread. That way, you roll mostly on smooth rubber when going straight, which reduces the tire’s resistance. As long as you go straight, this works OK. When you corner on pavement, the tire grips fine at first. Then you climb onto the knobs and suddenly lose traction. It’s not exactly what you want from a high-performance tire…

If these tires had excellent performance in mud, it might be worth the trade-off. But when grip is reduced,  you can’t lean the bike far enough to use the corner knobs. Even if the tire sinks deep into the mud, there are too few knobs to really make a difference – you don’t get much extra traction. Once more, you end up with a tire that corners like a knobby on pavement, but slides like a slick tire in mud.

How can you get around this problem? On the face of it, the answer is simple: Make the knobs large enough that they don’t squirm, yet space them far enough that the mud clears from in between. The knob shape itself doesn’t make much of a difference – the engineers of several tire makers have acknowledged privately that the different knob shapes are “mostly for style.”

Coming up with the idea was easy, but the devil is always in the details. Can a knob be large enough not to squirm, yet small enough to dig into the mud? Our testing indicated that this was possible. How much open space do you need to clear mud? Fortunately, decades of racing cyclocross on various tires had given us a good idea of where to start with our testing.

How to make a knobby tire that corners predictably? You arrange the knobs so that there always is the same amount of rubber on the road, no matter how hard you lean the bike. That way, the traction is always the same, rather than suddenly breaking away as you lean and get on the edge of a line of knobs. It’s logical, and yet I haven’t seen any other knobby tire that follows that principle.

The hardest part was combining all these parameters into a single tread pattern. It took a lot of experimentation, but the result has surprised everybody. On a fast paved group ride, these tires perform as well as many racing tires. I know this sounds like hyperbole, but riders who’ve tried these tires agree. Gravel racer Ted King wrote to us: “On pavement, they’re incredibly smooth. The tread pattern is awesome — it’s really cool how deceptively simple the Steilacoom tread is, yet how well the tires work.” One independent reviewer even set Strava KOMs on his Steilacooms.

The cornering is easier to show. I can’t think of any other knobby tire that I’d dare to lean over that far on pavement. And I wasn’t even pushing the limits…

How about the performance in mud? After three seasons of cyclocross on Steilacooms, everybody agrees: They grip as well as the best cyclocross tires developed specifically for muddy courses.

Surely, there must be some drawbacks – otherwise, we should all be riding these knobbies all the time!

On the straights, the knobs have less ‘pneumatic trail,’ because there isn’t a continuous surface of rubber on the road. That means they don’t have quite the same straight-line stability as smooth-treaded tires in the same width. You may not even notice this, because the effect is small.

The knobs add a little weight, too, but once again, the effect is small, because the tread between the knobs is thinner – that part of the tire doesn’t wear, so we don’t need extra rubber there. Our knobbies weigh between 45 and 60 g more than their smooth-treaded cousins in the Rene Herse tire program. Thanks to our lightweight casings, they’re still lighter than almost any other tire with the same width.

As to the rolling resistance, the difference is so small that you won’t notice on the road even on a spirited ride with a group of well-matched friends. The biggest disadvantage may be that, like Ted King at the Epic 150, you’ll have people wonder why you ride “so much tire” on rides that include significant pavement…

I’m excited about the Rene Herse dual-purpose knobbies, because they make rides possible that were difficult to imagine before: rides that combine paved roads with muddy trails and even snow. We no longer have to choose between on-road performance and off-pavement grip. Once again, we’re pushing the limits of what our all-road bikes can do.
Our dual-purpose knobbies are available in three models:

• 700C x 38 mm Steilacoom
• 700C x 42 mm Hurricane Ridge
• 650B x 42 mm Pumpkin Ridge
• 650B x 48 mm Juniper Ridge

Photo credit: Dustin Michelson (Photo 1).

Safety advice: Rene Herse tires are designed for rims that meet the ETRTO standard, specifically:

• G height: 5.2 – 6.5 mm
• Sidewalls with hooks.

Rims that do not meet the current standards – especially hookless rims and rims with sidewalls that have G heights of less than 5.0 mm – are not recommended for use with Rene Herse tires. This is especially important when installing your tires tubeless. Our testing has found that tires mounted tubeless on hookless rims or on rims with lower-than-standard G heights have a less-than-adequate margin of safety against blow-offs. All warranties are void when Rene Herse tires are installed on rims that do not meet the current ETRTO standards.

The ETRTO (European Tire and Rim Technical Organization) sets most standards for car and bicycle tires and wheels, not just for Europe, but for the entire world. Currently, the ETRTO standards are the only standards that exist for tubeless bicycle wheels. They specify the G height of the sidewall at 5.2 mm (for tubeless) and 5.5 – 6.5 mm (for tubes, depending on the rim width). The sidewall must have a hook.

Like most tire makers, we design our tires to meet the ETRTO standards. Why don’t all rim makers follow these standards, too?

In the past, there were some poorly designed rims with overly deep wells and G heights larger than 6.5 mm. Fortunately, these rims have long been discontinued, and cyclists who still have them usually know how to deal with the problems that occur when trying to mount tires on them (as much as this is possible).

These days, we see some rims with G heights that are smaller than the ETRTO standard and no hooks. Even though these rims do not meet the current standards, this makes sense for mountain bikes with carbon rims: A tall sidewall makes the rim vulnerable if the tire bottoms out while the bike is leaning over. The tall G height provides a long lever that can crack the rim. Why hookless? Mostly because the hook is difficult to make with carbon fiber: It requires a complex 3-piece mold for the rim bed.

A ‘hookless’ rim (above) with a shorter G height is stronger and less expensive to make. Stiff mountain bike tires are inflated to ultra-low pressures. They won’t blow off their rims even if there isn’t much sidewall to hold them on. So the non-standard rims have worked fine for mountain bikes. These mountain bike rims usually come with low maximum pressure ratings.

Recently, some rim makers have introduced ‘gravel’ or ‘all-road’ rims that are made to mountain bike standards: without hooks and with low G heights. Unfortunately, these rims don’t work well for high-performance all-road tires.

We can’t say it often enough: The bikes we ride aren’t mountain bikes. They are road bikes with really wide tires. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the industry still misunderstands what gravel and all-road riding is all about: The sport has grown from the bottom up, when riders like us headed into the mountains, found new roads and designed new equipment to ride on them. Some of the established manufacturers are getting it, but many still think inside their traditional boxes of ‘Road’ and ‘Mountain’ bikes. More often than not, they’ve put our bikes into the ‘Mountain’ category.

Here at Rene Herse Cycles, we’ve always thought of them as ‘road’ bikes – that is why we coined the term ‘all-road bike’ for them. Even though my Firefly (above) has 26″ wheels, it’s not a drop-bar mountain bike. It’s a road bike with wide tires. We ride on road tires, and we need road rims for them.

That is why hookless mountain bike rims don’t work well for all-road wheels. All-road tires are supple, and they run at higher pressures than mountain bike tires. This requires an additional margin of safety.

We tested a 650B x 48 mm Switchback Hill tire on a carbon mountain bike wheel with a hookless rim and a G height 0f 5.0 mm. We mounted the tire tubeless, but without sealant (for obvious reasons). The rim is rated to 40 psi, and the tire was fine at that pressure. 40 psi isn’t a lot, even for a 48 mm-wide tire. The tire is rated to 55 psi, so we kept inflating to see what would happen. At 58 psi, the tire blew off. We then repeated the experiment with a second tire, and it blew off at 65 psi. This problem is not limited to Rene Herse tires: Other riders have reported similar blow-offs with tires from other makers.

58 psi is a lot of pressure for a 48 mm tire, but when the tolerances stack up in a bad way (slightly oversize tire and slightly undersize rim) or when the tire isn’t installed perfectly, the blow-off pressure will be lower. Then the margin of safety won’t be adequate. This is neither the tire nor the rim’s fault. It’s simply using the wrong rim for a supple all-road tire.

How much of a difference does the hook make? We put one of the tires on a HED Belgium Plus rim. The G height is the same as on the carbon rim we tested (5.0 mm), but the HED rim has a hook. Even though this is the same tire that already had blown off the rim once, it stayed on at 75 psi. The is no doubt: The hook has a crucial function in keeping the tire on the rim. Other rim and tire makers have tested and found the same: The hook significantly increases the pressure at which the tire safely stays on the rim.

Fortunately, there is another way to increase the margin of safety: Use inner tubes. We put the tire back on the hookless mountain bike wheel, this time with a tube. We inflated it to 75 psi and left it overnight. Nothing happened. We were surprised that even the violent explosion had not stretched the tire, but these beads are strong. (However, we don’t recommend re-using a tire that has blown off the rim.) That is good news: Hookless rims tend to work better when used with tubes – even though we cannot officially recommend them, since they don’t meet the ETRTO standards to which our tires are designed

Conclusion: All-road bikes are road bikes, and all-road tires are road tires: They should be mounted on road wheels. When you buy new wheels, make sure the rims are designed to the ETRTO standards, and not to mountain bike standards: You want a hook and a G height of 5.2 – 6.5 mm. If your wheels already are equipped with hookless rims, using tubes can increase your margin of safety. And check the maximum pressure ratings, not just of the tire, but also the rim: Don’t exceed them!

Tubeless is great technology – had I used inner tubes on the ride across Odarumi Pass in Japan (above), I probably would have pinch-flatted several times. But tubeless is also an emerging technology. We’ve had to learn how to mount tires (huge blasts with compressors are a sign that the rim is undersize) and how much sealant we need (more than we usually think). Now we are discovering that hookless mtb-style rims don’t work well with all-road tires.

Why do tubeless tires blow off so much more easily? Without a tube reinforcing the joint between rim and tire, it’s much easier for air pressure to force its way out. It’s still extremely rare for tires to blow off, but, with tubeless tires becoming more popular, there have been more incidents than before. They affect all brands of tires – a little while ago, a wheel maker told me of two different tires from a big German tire maker that had blown off his hookless rims that day.

Also remember that tubeless-compatible tires always need liquid sealant inside. If the sealant dries out completely, the tire can break loose from the rim sidewall and deflate suddenly. This can cause the tire to come off the rim, even if rim and tire are sized correctly.

Safety is our biggest concern, not just for our customers, but also for ourselves, because we ride our bikes hard. We’ll continue to test, and we’ll continue to work with rim makers, to drive tubeless technology forward in a safe and responsible way. The last thing we want to worry about during our adventures is whether our tires will stay on their rims! Fortunately, in almost 100,000 km (60,000 miles) on Rene Herse tires and their predecessors, I’ve not experienced a blowout. We’ll work hard to make it remain that way!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmt02COlmb4?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
The Juniper Ridge 650B x 48 mm dual-purpose knobbies have arrived. Unlike any other all-road tire, they combine excellent speed and cornering grip on pavement with unrivaled traction in mud and snow. At 450 g (Extralight) and 510 g (Standard), they are among the lightest tires in this popular size.
We had a lot of fun testing the new tires in the Cascade Mountains, and you’ll have a lot of fun riding them on your own adventures. We made this little video during our testing, showing the new tires in their native habitat.
The new Juniper Ridge tires are now in stock, but supplies are limited. More are on the way.
Click here for more information or to order.

That is how the Ted King-Rene Herse relationship came about. Ted had ridden Rene Herse/Compass tires in the past on his own road bikes, including a 700-mile self-supported trip down the California coast, and he was curious how they’d work on gravel. We sent him a few sets of tires for testing and after riding both our dual-purpose knobbies and our all-road tires in Vermont’s tough winter, he was impressed.

He loved the Steilacoom knobbies:
“On pavement, they’re incredibly smooth. There is no noticeable chatter; no abrupt transitions from mid-turn to righting the bike and pedaling straight. Segue offroad, I had all the confidence in the world when ripping gravel. The tread pattern is awesome — it’s really cool how deceptively simple the Steilacoom tread is, yet how well the tires work.”

Ted told me about the incredible James Bay Descent he and three friends were planning: A 700 km ride in northern Ontario on fatbikes in the middle of winter. It’s wonderful that even at his level, gravel riding is still about having fun on the bike first and foremost.
For a trip this remote, where even a simple saddle sore can cause real problems, I suggested he try a Gilles Berthoud saddle. His response was typical of a racer: “Changing saddles (much like changing tubeless tires) is not my favorite activity, so I will do it ASAP and report back.”
In the event, he liked the saddle so much that he got the same saddles for the entire team. During the return from their incredible ride (above), Ted wrote: “I wanted to send a note on behalf of the entire team saying that our butts are far more sore in these plush car seats than on the 40+ hours of riding. The Berthoud saddles were incredible and the entire team loved them.” And Ted asked to keep the saddle for his gravel racing rig.

Fast forward to last weekend and the first big gravel race of the season. Ted finished a close second – above he’s crossing the finish line one second behind winner Payson McElveen after they set a new course record.

Ted chose to race on our 700C x 44 mm Snoqualmie Pass tires. He texted afterward: “Everyone said that you’d need knobby tires, but the tires were perfect, because it was so dry. The Snoqualmies were amazing!” He also was very happy with the Gilles Berthoud saddle – he’s planning to keep it on his bike.
We are excited to work with a racer of Ted’s caliber. His input into tire development is extremely valuable to us. It’s great that our tires have been working so well for him, and we’ll see where our collaboration will lead us in the future.

• Follow Ted on Instagram
• Click here for more information about Rene Herse tires.

Photo credits: Ansel Dickey (Photo 1), Ted King (Photos 2, 3, 4, 6), Land Run 100 (Photo 5).

At Rene Herse Cycles, we love supple tires. More than anything else, they have come to define what we do: Bring you the highest performance and greatest joy as you ride your bike. Supple casings makes tires faster and more comfortable – what is not to like?
This post’s headline already hints that, like all great things, supple tires have some drawbacks. They are high-performance parts. We make our Rene Herse / Compass tires as user-friendly as possible – for example, we add a little rubber to the center of the tread to increase their lifespan considerably. But we don’t want to reinforce our tires to the point where it compromises their performance. This means that – like all high-performance components – supple tires require a little extra care.

Tire Mounting
Supple tires are more flexible, which can make them harder to mount, especially with tubeless-compatible rims. The ‘well’ in the center of the rim is there to allow mounting and removing the tire. It reduces the diameter of the rim, and provides slack to lift the bead over the rim wall. To mount the tire, the bead must be in the well all around the rim (left bead in the drawing above).
With stiff tires, the bead is either inside the well or not. With supple tires, the bead can flex and snake in and out of the well. When that happens, the bead rests partially on the ‘shelf’ next to the well. Then the bead doesn’t have enough slack to be lifted over the rim sidewall. The tire seems incredibly hard to mount. The secret is to go around the tire several times and push the bead into the well in the center of the rim. Then, a supple tire becomes as easy to mount as a stiff one.
Pro Tip: Tubeless rim tape is thinner and slipperier than standard tape and should always be used with tubeless-compatible rims, even when you install tubes. Otherwise, the tire bead will not slide over the edge between the well and the shelf as it seats against the rim wall. Tubeless tape can be a good choice with non-tubeless rims, too, if the tire fits too tightly.

Tubeless Installation
Tubeless tires eliminate the risk of pinch flats, which can be a game changer for riding in really rough terrain. We feel this is important, so we’ve worked hard to make our wider tire models tubeless-compatible.
Tubeless installations work great for 99% of our customers, but the remaining 1% can have trouble. In rare cases, the casing can leak sealant through the sidewall. To keep the casing supple, we keep the rubber coating to a minimum. Sometimes, this can leave the casing a little porous. No problem if you are running tubes, but tubeless sealant can leak through these pores: Make sure to shake the sealant for at least 60 seconds before you inject it into the tire. For the first installation, we recommend Orange Seal, which seals the casing better than other brands. Also make sure you add enough sealant – wide tires have a large surface area and will absorb a surprising amount of sealant.
Sometimes, the tiny pores in the tire’s casing are smaller than the solids in the sealant, allowing the liquid to escape without the solids plugging these microscopic holes. You’ll see bubbles on the sidewall. (Sorry, no photo – in more than 50 tubeless installations, it has yet to happen to me.) If this happens to you, we’ll replace the tire under warranty. The alternative would be to coat all our sidewalls with more rubber, which would make our tires heavier, slower and less comfortable.

Tubeless tires can blow off the rims – independent of which brand you use. This is rarely the fault of the tire, but usually a rim problem. We’ve found that quite a few rims are slightly undersize. When you use tubes, this makes sense – a slightly undersize rim poses no problem, because the tube reinforces the joint between rim and tire. An oversize rim would make the tire difficult or impossible to mount. That is why the tolerances of rims are usually negative (smaller is OK, bigger is not). Some OEM rims appear to be intentionally undersized, to facilitate tire mounting in the big assembly plants for production bikes.
When you mount your tires tubeless, there is nothing reinforcing the joint between rim and tire. Even a slightly undersize rim can cause a tire to blow off. This problem is greater with supple tires: A stiff tire will stay on a slightly undersized rim, because its bead has to lift over the rim edge for quite some distance before it blows off. A supple tire can lift across the rim edge in just one place, because its sidewall is more flexible. This can lead to consternation among customers: “This rim worked with my last tire, and now you say it’s undersize?” What happens here is simply that the tolerances for the fit between rim and tire are tighter for a supple tire: A rim that (barely) works with stiff tires may be too far out of tolerances for a supple tire.

Fortunately, you don’t have to replace your rim just because it’s a bit undersize. Build up the rim bed with extra rim tape – use thicker ‘Gorilla Tape’ if the fit is very loose – and the tire should seat fine. You want a slightly tight fit of the tire on the rim, so you can barely mount the tire by hand, or with some light tire lever action. The tire should seat when you inflate it with a standard floor pump. If you need huge blasts of air from a compressor to seat the tire, the fit is too loose.
Don’t try to seat a tire that doesn’t fit properly on the rim! You risk having it blow off while you ride. Improve the fit by building up the rim bed with tape, then seat the tire.
Pro Tip: For many riders, it makes sense to run inner tubes. First of all, it makes your bike faster: A thin, lightweight tube adds less resistance than liquid sealant sloshing around inside your tire. The tube reinforces the rim/tire joint, greatly reducing the risk of blow-offs. If you are concerned about flats, you can add sealant to your inner tube and obtain similar puncture protection with less hassle.

Puncture Resistance
There is no doubt about it: Supple tires are less resistant to punctures – they don’t have the ultra-thick tread and reinforcing belts that resist punctures, but also make tires stiff, heavy and slow. If you get a lot of flats with your current tires – and your tires aren’t worn paper-thin – you probably shouldn’t run supple tires.
If you ride on the shoulders of busy highways, which are strewn with debris ranging from broken beer bottles to steel wires from exploded truck tires, you’ll have flats with most tires, and supple high-performance tires are definitely not a good choice. The photo above was taken during a 600 km Flèche ride. Between three bikes and one tandem, we had one puncture during the entire ride – during the 5 kilometers we rode on a highway shoulder.
Fortunately, as more riders have adopted wider tires, punctures have become a relatively rare occurrence. A 42 mm tire inflated to 35 psi (2.4 bar) will just roll over most debris that would puncture a narrower tire inflated to higher pressures. And since wider tires encourage you to explore backroads with cleaner pavement, the actual frequency of flats is much less than in the past, even though our tire casings, by themselves, are less puncture-resistant.
 
Pro Tip: Racers used to wipe their tires after riding through debris. If the debris is removed before it gets hammered into the tire, most flats can be avoided. Rather than risk injury by putting your hands on your tires, you can use tire wipers – little wires that brush debris off your tires.

Sidewall Cuts
Supple sidewalls are thinner and easier to cut. When the tire scrapes along a rock, especially a sharp one, the sidewall can get cut. How does often this happen? It depends. In some regions, the rocks are sharper than in others. Some riders let the bike move around under them more, so the tires aren’t forced into the rocks, reducing the risk of sidewall cuts. And sometimes, it is just plain bad luck.
I’ve ridden our Extralight tires over 10,000s of miles on rough gravel, and I’ve had one sidewall cut – in the epic Otaki 100 km Mountain Bike Race in Japan. It didn’t destroy the tire, as it cut only through one of the three layers of the casing. I rode the tire for another week on a tour, then replaced it.
Pro Tip: Our Standard casings use slightly thicker threads, making them more cut-resistant than the ultra-supple Extralight models.

Cost
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that supple tires are more expensive. They are made from more expensive materials. Their finer tolerances mean that they have to be made mostly by hand, by skilled labor. They are made in small batches. All that costs a little more.
Fortunately, wider tires last a lot longer, because they spread the wear over a greater rubber surface. Now that I am running 42 mm-wide tires, I find that my tires lasts about three times as long as the 28s I used to run. So even if my tires cost three times as much (and they don’t), the per-mile cost is the same.
Pro Tip: If you ride relatively few miles, your tires will deteriorate and crack before you wear them out. Keep your tires out of direct sunlight and away from refrigerators, freezers and heater blowers. Electric motors emit ozone, which destroys the rubber of your tires. Stored in a cool, dark and dry place, your tires will last (almost) forever.

In the past, supple tires were tubulars that only racers used, and only for races and special events. We all switched to our ‘training wheels’ for other rides, because the hassles and costs associated with tubulars were too great for everyday use.
Fortunately, supple tires are now available as clinchers. Wider tires have greatly improved the old problems of flat and wear resistance. We’ve made some additional tweaks to Compass / Rene Herse tires to make them more user-friendly without detracting from their performance. Our goal is to make you smile every time you go for a ride.
Further reading:

• How to set up tires tubeless
• Information about Rene Herse tires

Tubeless tires have eliminated the risk of pinch flats. For riding in really rough terrain, they are a game changer. But like all new technologies, it’s taken some trial-and-error until we figured out how to run bicycle tires tubeless.

Of course, tubeless tires are nothing new. Car tires have been tubeless for decades, but translating that technology to much more flexible and lighter bicycle tires has not been easy. (We don’t want to ride on rubber that’s as stiff and heavy as car tires!) Modern bicycle tires fall into two groups:

• ‘Tubeless-ready’ tires are covered with a rubber membrane – basically an inner tube is permanently vulcanized into the tire. These tires are airtight. You can just install them, and run them without inner tubes. However, the extra rubber makes them relatively stiff and slow.
• ‘Tubeless-compatible’ tires are not airtight, and they roll as fast as conventional tires. Their bead has been designed for tubeless installation, so you can run them tubeless – but they require sealant to make the casing air-tight and to seal the tire against the rim. The sealant also will seal small punctures that otherwise would cause a flat. Most Rene Herse tires are ‘tubeless-compatible.’

Key to mounting tubeless tires is the right technique. This is especially important with supple tires. Stiff tires mount easily – just like car tires – because their casing is so stiff that it either touches the rim walls and seals, or it doesn’t.

Supple casings make tires fast and comfortable because they flex easily. This means that they may contact the rim in a few places, and have air gaps in others – making them harder to mount and seal tubeless. They follow the general rule of high-performance components: The tolerances need to be a bit tighter, and working with them requires a little more skill.

It’s not hard to install supple tires tubeless, if you work methodically. Here is how I installed my Rene Herse Extralights tubeless while traveling in Japan, with no access to a workshop and just a few tools.

To mount a tire tubeless, here is what you need: a tubeless valve; a valve core tool; a syringe for injecting the tubeless sealant; sealant; a tire lever; an inner tube; a tubeless-compatible tire. Your rims also must be tubeless-compatible, and covered with tubeless rim tape. It’s good to have extra rim tape on hand.

I only could find Stan’s sealant in Japan. It worked fine, but we recommend Panaracer’s SealSmart because it does a better job sealing the slightly porous sidewalls of supple tires.

You also need a pump to inflate the tire. A floor pump suffices, and in a pinch, you can get away with a frame pump. You do not need an air compressor. In fact, if you use an air compressor to make up for problems in tire/rim fit, your tire may blow off the rim later without warning.

For safe tubeless installation, a good fit between tire and rim is extremely important. Unfortunately, many OEM rims are slightly undersize, because that makes it easier to install tires in the bike assembly plants. (Imagine a rim that is slightly oversize. For a factory that needs to mount 10,000 tires a month, spending five extra minutes per tire would be a total disaster. That is why OEM rims tend to run small, and never should be larger than spec. OEM tires are installed with tubes, where a slightly undersize rim doesn’t pose a problem.)

If your tire goes on easily, the rim is undersized. Don’t try to install the tire. It may work fine at first, but it can blow off the rim without warning. If this happens in your workshop, it’s just a nuisance (and a big mess). If it happens on the road, the consequences can be far worse.

If your rim is undersize, it’s not the end of the world – there is a solution. Build up the rim bed with additional layers of rim tape. Some mechanics use Gorilla Tape for the extra layers – it’s a little thicker than standard tubeless tape. (Always use tubeless tape as the first layer on the rim to seal the spoke holes.) The tire should be a slightly tight fit. This makes sure that it seats correctly and doesn’t blow off the rim later.

When installing tires, make sure that the bead is in the rim well (above) all around before you lift the last part of the bead over the rim edge. The well is there to provide slack for the bead – the rim’s diameter is smaller in the center than toward the rim walls. With supple tires and tubeless rims, parts of the bead can end up on the shelf when you mount the tire. Push the bead into the rim well all around the tire – then the last bit of the bead will slip easily over the sidewall.

We recommend installing the tire with a tube first. The tube pushes the rim tape into place and makes sure it adheres properly to the rim. This prevents sealant from seeking between rim and tape and dislodging the tape. Then air can escape through the rim’s spoke holes… (Also make sure to wipe off the rim with alcohol before installing the tape to remove all oils and residue from the manufacturing process.)

If you use a floor pump to seat the tire, the tube also seats the beads and gives the tire its shape. Make sure both beads pop into place. Then unseat one bead (the one that popped into place first) by pushing it into the rim well, and remove the tube.

Install the tubeless valve. Don’t forget the valve nut that holds the valve in place. It pulls the valve’s rubber cone into the rim’s hole to create a tight seal. Don’t overtighten the nut: If the valve gets clogged with sealant or the tubeless setup fails, you’ll need to be able to remove the valve on the road to install a tube.

Before you inflate the tire, seat the bead as far around the rim as possible, starting at the valve.

Pull the tire upward and move the bead outward, until it sits on the shelf next to the rim wall.

Continue until the tire is too tight to pull upward. The remaining air gap is small and furthest from the valve. It will seal as the pressure pushes the tire outward.

Inflate the tire ‘dry’ without sealant at first. That way, if you need to remove the tire to add more rim tape, there won’t be messy sealant inside. Pump quickly to build up pressure faster than the air escapes.

Watch the tire as it seats. On the left, the line molded into the tire sidewall is still hidden by the rim wall. The bead hasn’t emerged from the rim’s well yet. Keep pumping until you hear a loud ‘pop’ as the tire seats.

On the right, you can see all of the line that is molded into the sidewall. Make sure it’s parallel to the rim edge all around the tire. Check this on both sides. If it’s OK, then the tire is seated on the rim.

If the tire doesn’t seat, take it off, and add more rim tape to create a tighter fit and smaller air gaps. If you use an air compressor, the tire should seat easily. If you need huge blasts of air to seat the tire, then the rim is too small. Build up the rim with extra tape, rather than risk a blow-out in the future.

Now the tire is inflated and looks great, but air will escape through small cracks and microscopic holes. To seal the tire, add sealant. Let out the air and unscrew the valve core. The beads will remain seated. (If a bead comes unseated now, it wasn’t properly seated in the first place.)

Turn the wheel so the valve is neither at the top nor at the bottom of the tire, where sealant would spray back out of the valve. Shake the sealant vigorously for a minute, so the solids are in suspension. Don’t skimp on this step! Otherwise, you’ll just inject colored water into the tire, and it won’t seal.

For our Rene Herse tires, we recommend Panaracer’s Seal Smart. It seems to seal the supple sidewalls better than other brands. When mounting the tires in the photos, I was in Japan, and Panaracer’s sealant had not yet been released. I couldn’t find our second choice, Orange Seal. So I used Stan’s. It worked fine.

Make sure to use enough sealant. Wide tires have a lot of surface area. To seal properly, you need about 90 ml (3 oz) – one to one-and-a-half of the little bottles shown in the photo.

Replace the valve core. When I installed the tires tubeless in Tokyo, I didn’t have a valve core tool. A small adjustable wrench will do the job in a pinch.

Inflate the tire again. Since it’s already seated, this will be easy.

Close the valve. Now the tire looks ready to roll, but the sealant must still be distributed to seal all the microscopic gaps. Just riding the tire isn’t enough to stop all the tiny leaks.

There are different techniques for distributing the sealant. I’ve found this one to work best, because it methodically works the sealant into every part of the tire and rim interface. Make sure you have enough room. Don’t hit the ceiling, furniture, or your head. (Don’t ask how I know!)

Hold the wheel steady (left), so the sealant collects at the bottom. Quickly move the wheel upward (center). Centrifugal force will keep the sealant right under the tire tread. Hold the wheel over your head (right), still slightly tilted away from you. Now the sealant runs downward, covers the sidewall, and seeps into the gap between tire and rim.

Rotate the wheel a few degrees and repeat. (Start with the valve at the bottom, so you have a reference point.) Once you’ve worked all the way around the tire, turn the wheel around, and repeat on the other side. Now your tire is ready to ride. Go for a ride immediately, even if it’s just a few times around the block. This will help distribute the sealant further.

If your tire loses air overnight, check it like a leaky inner tube. Often, you can hear and feel the air escape. Hold the tire so that gravity pulls the sealant into the leak. If it doesn’t seal, there may not be enough sealant in the tire.

Now your tubeless tire is ready to roll. Enjoy the ride!

Tubeless tips:

• Panaracer Smart Seal works best to seal the supple casings of our Rene Herse tires.
• Use enough sealant. When the mechanics at Paul Camp prepped bikes for their press fleet, they put 3 oz. (90 ml) in each tire, because they didn’t want trouble. More sealant makes your tires slower, but if your tire runs out of sealant, it’ll start losing air. If you want to go fast and don’t need to worry about pinch flats, use inner tubes. (Click here to read more about why tubeless tires are slightly slower than tires mounted with tubes.)
• Sealant needs to be topped up at least once a month. Supple tires push and pull slightly against the rim sidewall as the wheel rotates. If the sealant dries out, air will start leaking. Then the tire can suddenly break loose from the rim wall and lose all its air. Don’t ride your tires when there is no liquid sealant left inside – the sealant not only acts as flat protection, but it constantly seals the tire against the rim.
• Use only new tires for tubeless installation. As a tire is ridden, the sidewalls flex and become more porous, making them harder to seal.
• If you want the flat protection offered by the sealant without the hassle of tubeless installation, you can put sealant in your inner tubes. This also works best with new tires, and you obviously need tubes with removable valve cores. (The tubes we sell have removable cores.) Simply put some sealant inside the tube, and it’ll seal many punctures.
• Most Rene Herse tires are tubeless-compatible. This is listed in the tire’s description on the web site, and the label on the package says ‘Tubeless-Compatible.’

Click here for more information about Rene Herse tires.

“An exceptional tyre that will make you faster and happier.” That was the verdict when the British web site www.road.cc tested our Bon Jon Pass tires recently. When we hear positive feedback, whether it’s from a professional tester or a customer, it makes our day.
I smiled when I read the calculation of the weight savings. It appears that, on average, spending a British pound ($1.28) will make your bike 1.91 g lighter. Based on that metric, the tester explained that choosing “the Compass Bon Jon Pass Extralight over the Schwalbe G-One Speed was ‘worth’ £157 of savings elsewhere. Ergo, at £67 RRP, the Bon Jon Pass is a ridiculously cost-effective weight saver.” I’m not sure about the math, but it does show that lightweight tires are the easiest way to shed significant weight, especially with wide tires where the weight differences can be quite large.
More importantly, the tester liked the supple casing and the excellent grip and comfort in the real world of the Scottish Highlands: “I hardly noticed broken patches of chip seal, or small gaps and lips of manhole covers. I found myself thinking up tests for what I could and couldn’t feel through the bike’s contact points.”
Negatives? Tubeless setup with supple tires is inevitably a bit trickier – the fit between tire and rim must be ‘just right’ and the thin casing is more likely to leak air until it seals. And his riding partners apparently weren’t always happy: “I realised I wasn’t signalling road surface irregularities as much as I should be to my sub-30mm-shod brethren following behind.” Until they switch to supple, wide tires, too…
No bike test would be complete without commenting on performance – “These are fast tyres, period. World-beatingly fast.” – and price – “I believe they are worth every penny.” 
There isn’t much we can add. We developed our tires because we wanted faster and more comfortable tires for our own bikes. When others enjoy them as much as we do, it makes us happy, too.
Further information:

• The full review on road.cc
• More information about Compass tires

How wide a tire can I fit on my bike? It’s a common question, and yet it’s difficult to figure out, especially when you plan to change wheel sizes.

Hahn Rossman has developed a simple tire fit gauge that allows checking tire clearances on your bike. Put the disc for the tire width in the slot for the wheel size. Place the gauge on a dummy axle (any old hub axle will work). Rotate the gauge around the axle to check clearances between the chainstays, at the back of the seat tube and between the seatstays.

It’s such a simple tool that you wonder why nobody else has made one before. Above, you can see that if your frame has clearance for 700C x 23 mm tires…

… you may also be able to fit 650B x 38 mm tires…

… but you need a lot of extra clearance to fit 26″ x 54 mm tires.
The outer diameter of all wheels is the same, but it’s the clearance to the chainstays that is often too tight. The gauge makes it easy to visualize where the widest portion of the tire will be. It eliminates the guesswork that can make conversions to different tire sizes a hit-or-miss.
The Tire Fit Gauge is laser-cut from plexiglass. It’s in stock now. Click here for more information.

One of the benefits of wide tires is that they run at lower pressures. Yet the supple casings of our Rene Herse tires require higher pressure to corner well and not bottom out on big bumps. Doesn’t the higher pressure negate the benefits of wider tires?

Think of the tire casing and the air inside as two separate springs. Let’s call them the rubber spring and the air spring. Both work together to support the weight of the rider. How you distribute the load between the two springs changes with a supple tire: Less rubber requires more air. And vice versa.

When you inflate your tire, you are aiming for a tire drop of about 15-20%. (Tire drop is how much the tire deforms under the rider’s weight.) Whether you use rubber or air as the spring doesn’t change how much the tire deflects. What changes is how the tire behaves as it flexes.

On tires with stiff casings, you use rubber as your suspension, and you need little air. The extreme are airless tires like those found on dock-less bikeshares. They use only rubber and foam to support the bike and rider. However, rubber has a lot of hysteresis, so it consumes a lot of energy as it flexes. That is why stiff tires are slow.

A tire with a supple casing (above) relies mostly on air to support the weight of bike and rider. Air has almost no hysteresis: Little energy is lost as the tire flexes. That is part of the secret behind the speed of supple tires.

A supple tire is more comfortable, too. The thinner casing has less inertia and requires less energy to flex, so it can react more quickly to surface irregularities. A supple tire absorbs the vibrations, while a stiff tire transmits them to the bike and rider. And since vibrations slow you down, that makes the supple tire faster, too.

So you gain speed twice: the thinner casing absorbs less energy (smaller hysteretic losses) and it transmits fewer vibrations (smaller suspension losses). Talk about a win-win situation!

It’s important to remember that supple tires need more air to hold up your bike. After all, you’ve reduced the spring rate (stiffness) of the rubber spring, and you need to make up for this by increasing the spring rate of the air spring. If you run your supple tires at the same pressure as stiffer ones, you risk having the sidewalls collapse during hard cornering. And that can be dangerous.

Put in a little more air, and you’ll find that supple tires offer more grip than stiff ones: The supple casing reacts better to surface irregularities and thus keeps the tire in better contact with the road.

There is no need to go back to the days when we inflated our tires to the maximum indicated on the sidewall. Use Bicycle Quarterly’s tire pressure chart (above) as a starting point, and experiment from there.

Remember that the chart lists the weight per wheel, not for the entire bike. I apologize that the chart stops at 37 mm – when Frank Berto measured the tire drop of dozens of tires, 37 mm was the widest road tire he could find!

On gravel and in mud, there is less traction, and thus the forces on the tire are lower. The tires won’t collapse even if you run very low pressures. On soft surfaces, you get more traction, more comfort and more speed at those low pressures.

Generally, I run about 10-20% less air in my tires on gravel than I do on pavement. You don’t want to run a pressure that is too low – it flexes the tire sidewalls excessively, which robs power and ultimately breaks the fine threads that make up the casing. And of course, you don’t want to bottom out except on rare occasions, even when running tubeless tires.

Finding the right tire pressure takes some experimenting. If the tire feels too stiff, let out some air. If you feel the tire folding under the rim as you corner, add some pressure. Also remember that the gauges on bicycle floor pumps are notoriously inaccurate, so if you pump up your tires to the pressures from the chart and your bike doesn’t feel right, trust your feel rather than your gauge.

Conclusion: Even though supple tires run at higher pressures, they are faster, more comfortable and grip better than tires with stiff casings. The ‘correct’ tire pressure should have some margin of safety above the point where the tire collapses during hard cornering.