Tire hell: is this the future?

Today I read this review of the new Pirelli tire at cyclingweekly.com. Road tires keep getting fatter and fatter. This one is 40 mm wide, which makes me wonder when we’ll get to the “too wide” red line for road bikes since 28 mm tires seemed positively bloated just three years ago and we’re already settling on 30 mm as the new normal with 32 mm tires starting to edge in. Nancy already rides 32 mm and I envy her. Of course the problem for many of us is that when you have short reach rim brakes, which was the norm until gravel bikes hit the scene, you’re pretty much done at 28 mm. Anything wider and you’re looking at getting a bike with disc brakes or possibly a bike that can take medium reach brakes such as a Rivendell.

But this isn’t a post about tire widths. It’s about tire fitment. The writer of the review said the following: “…the P-Zeros are one of the hardest tyres I have ever had to fit. I had at least half a dozen attempts and a good couple of hours of wrestling. Two of the chunkiest tyre levers I own finally got them over the line, and sheer brute force. This incredible tight fit meant that there were little to no arguments when it came to inflation, as they popped up almost instantly with a track pump and sealed straight away – a silver lining, despite my red, raw hands.”

Two hours to fit a tire on a rim–is this a joke? Now imagine yourself on the road and having to fit a flat with this tire and having to get the tire off and back on the rim.

In fairness to Pirelli this tire occupies a murky grey area between road and all-road/gravel. So the likelihood that it’s intended to be used tubeless is fairly high. It also has flat protection belts. So getting a flat is probably less likely than with a light, thin road tire. If you set them up tubeless, then hopefully you won’t have to demount the tires and the sealant will do its job or you’re carrying a Dynaplug. Yet I have used Continental Gatorskins and even Specialized Armadillos, which are highly flat resistant, and flatted them.

The other stupid development forcing the use of extremely tight tires is hookless rims. These reduce the margin of error for fitment even more so that tire manufacturers have to protect their ass by producing tire beads so tight so that the average consumer not blow them off a hookless rim.

The development of such ridiculously tight fitting tires is not a good thing. You should be able to do a roadside repair with any tire and the Pirelli and its ilk are a step backward. If you’re racing, fine. But that’s a special use case. For everyday riders being able to handle a tire repair on the road is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. I don’t have a team car behind me to swap out my bike when I get a flat. Tires like the Pirelli make roadside repair next to impossible and that is patently stupid.