okay and ride report from last weekend I did about 21 miles mix pavement gravel and dirt
and the remounted tire held up fine so I didn't see any sealant leaks back that caused a bit of
a problem because one thing I do when I remount a tire and take it out on the first ride as I
tend to overfill it so I went up to around 40 psi and the assumption is that the tires gonna leak a
little bit on that first ride so I've had tires that have dropped from day 40 down to 35 or 30
psi which is my normal pressure this time though it didn't drop at all yeah I think it's down
to about my normal riding pressure let me just check yeah so that's right around 30 pounds to
bar pressure but the interesting thing I noticed with riding these tires at 40 psi I recalled how
horrible these tires ride at higher pressures I kind of equate it to riding a bike with a solid
rubber tire instead of a pneumatic tire because these things they're just really hard and there's
no spring to the tire you know you hit a bump and it just shakes the whole bike versus when you drop
down to 30 pounds there's a lot more cushion in the tire that was the thing that prompted me to
go to tubeless because these tires on the Schwab web page they have a recommended pressure of 50
to 85 psi and when I first got these tires and ran them with tubes I was running maybe 65 psi
and I gradually dropped it to 60 55 50 45 down to about 40 I could go maybe a little lower with
tubes but thirty-five was too low and then when I went to tubeless has dropped down to 35 and
30 and the tires were just totally different this tire at 40 pounds is just really harsh and jarring
when you ride on a bowl or dirt you drop it down to 30 and it's just supple just a night and day
difference that ten pounds of air makes and still both of those numbers are below the recommended
pressure of 50 psi so I like to have a little bit of squish to the tire like that so here's
the old tire that I took off and so you can see the the center portion of the tire is heavily
covered with sealant the sidewalls not so much and this is where all the cracks were there's all the
cracks there's all the sealant right underneath all the crack so that ceylon had been working
for several years trying to keep the cracks sealed up so yeah it's it's really strange how this one
tire had all these cracks form so this tire was put on the bike at the same time as that other
tire I ran about 6,000 miles and then I took this tire off when I had the flak so the only
thing I can think of is that maybe this tire might have been sitting on the shelf maybe for another
year or two and I know it couldn't have been any longer than that because I think these tires were
introduced someplace around 2010 or 2011 and I purchased these in 2012 so I mean these tires
were a new product Walt had discontinued their older marathon heavy-duty touring tire and then
they came out with this one because I remember when I purchased these you couldn't find much
information on these because they were brand new and nobody had any long-term reviews things like
that but yeah I must have got one bad tire because this one looks great so with these tires and my
typical writing activity what I need to work out is a tire management strategy because there's two
things you've got the tread wear which seems to be worse on the back and then you've got the lifetime
of the rubber which affects the front more because the front tire just doesn't seem to wear as much
so I think what I need to do is come up with a period of time to run a new tire on the back run
it for maybe three or four years and then move that tire to the front for the remainder of its
calendar time put another new tire on the back three or four years back there where the tread
down about halfway and then move it to the front and then get the last few years of running in
front a traditional wisdom on a road bike is you put the new tire on the front so you have I guess
cornering and braking power and then you move the old tire to the rear but with this bike doing more
off-road and dirt and gravel riding I find the front doesn't wear very much but the back does
and having better tread on the back you get more traction and this half worn tread up front is more
than adequate haven't had any problem with front slipping out or losing traction and turns things
like that but the rear going up 20% 30% graves in the dirt having as much tread as you can have
back there is definitely a good idea but yeah I think the tire swamp is a success so going out
on a little longer ride today will take it back up in the hills you about a thirty thirty-five mile
ride and see how it works but at least now I got the pressure down to little under thirty pounds
which should be a lot more comfortable but that was definitely a harsh ride at forty pounds last
week but yeah if you have some of these tires converting to tubeless is a really big win on
these tires because it lets you drop down to like I say thirty pounds and they're just a totally
different tire you know between thirty and forty pounds there's a huge ride quality difference just
amazing what 10 pounds less air will do now with the 40 millimeter tire I can't really get too much
below 30 I can run 27 the front but if I hit 25 I have problems with breaking the bead loose and
burping air out so 27 up here and about 30 in the back is it's kind of my lower limit at least for
high speed rocky trails where you got this size rocks that you're hitting and you have to have
any questions about these or running them to bliss or you've run these tires yourself and you have
any feedback go ahead and post up in the comment section below and as always thanks for watching