Hey folks!
Many of you know that I've been running Schwalbe tires for my race bike
in the last couple of years, you see here the Thunderbird in the back
which is my preferred option,
And up front, I really fell in love with the Rocket Ron last year.
But for 2019,
looks like Schwalbe has something else in store for us.
I am talking about this set:
Racing Ralph in the back, the new design,
and Racing Ray up front, so why don't we take a closer look.
I have both the 29er and the 27.5 version of these tires.
These two are 29 x 2.25,
and they are Evolution Series, SnakeSkin, tubeless ready compound TLE,
ADDIX Speedgrip for the Racing Ray,
the only tire compound that they exist in,
The Racing Ralph is ADDIX Speed,
you see the red stripe here,
and again, that is the only compound that they exist in.
And the only other piece of information that's useful is here,
HS489 for Racing Ray, and HS490 for Racing Ralph,
this is how they identify these tires.
Only other thing in the box is how to set up their tires tubeless,
and here are the tires.
Brand new tire, brand new tread for Racing Ralph.
These are Evolution Series, tubeless ready, SnakeSkin sidewall,
so this is a reinforced sidewall,
and both tires are built to be 625 grams.
You can see that Racing Ralph 29er is 616 grams,
so 10 grams less than the spec.
And the Ray is 596 grams, so this is 30 grams less than what's on the spec,
which is unusual.
My experience with the previous ADDIX compound tires
was that they were all overweight.
This is the 650b tire, Racing Ray.
This is supposed to be 590 grams and it's 549.
So this is a huge drop, about 40 grams under.
And Racing Ralph, 27.5,
this is 598g and it was supposed to be 590g.
I'm installing the tires on set of Stan's Arch MK3 rims,
that I have reviewed not too long ago.
They provide a 26 millimeter ID, or internal dimension.
And this redesigned profile has a 16 millimeter height.
Getting the tires on the rim was the usual business, a bit tight.
You can see the rotation here for the directional tread.
Also, the relevant information for the tire.
Again, these are 29 x 2.25.
Aside from that, the only thing I noticed
was the SnakeSkin sidewall, seem to be a bit more textured that in the past.
And just like their other tires, these are made in Indonesia,
and you can see the HS489 product code for the Racing Ray.
Side-to-side wobble it's a lot better than what I've seen
on the Schwalbe tires as of late.
Also, if you look at the tread here, nice and round,
and there's no channels whatsoever.
It looks as if you're just riding on a solid block of rubber
Also, on this side view you can see the cornering knobs here,
sticking out of the casing, but just slightly so.
This is the racing Ralph.
Racing Ray casing is as good, but in this case you can see
the pattern, you can see the channels here
that should give you better cornering grip,
with this being a dedicated front tire design.
I've had both tires at 35 psi for a couple of days,
and you can see here,
casing-to-casing is 56 millimeters.
stated on their website is 57 millimeters, and that is 2.21 inches.
And the new Racing Ralph is at 2.27 in,
so very close to the 2.25 that is supposed to be.
That is almost 58 millimeters.
Height for both tires
to the center knobs it's about 69.5 millimeters.
That's with the 16 millimeter rim height as mentioned earlier.
Cornering knob height is identical on the two tires,
It is around 4.5 mm.
However when you get here to the rolling knobs of the two tires
you're going to find something like
2.6 millimeters here on the Racing Ray,
2.4 mm on the Racing Ralph.
Also, overall, the Racing Ray, which is the Speedgrip compound
seem to be slightly smaller tire
than this ADDIX Speed, or the red strip Racing Ralph.
Good volume tires for these 2.25s.
interesting to have dedicated tread pattern front and rear.
They are true to their weight,
also casing seems to be well done,
so definitely Schwalbe upped their game for 2019.
What about you folks?
Do you plan to use any of the new Schwalbe tires
for racing in 2019?
I would love to hear your comments.
If you have any questions for me let me know below.
If you liked this don't forget to Like and Subscribe,
and until next time,
I will see you guys on the trails.
Cheers guys,
Cheers!