How To Hoard Mountain Bike Tires

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Extinction Events

One day, a while back, I was falling down an internet rabbit hole, reading about Giant Pandas. Pandas are considered vulnerable to extinction, an improvement over their at-risk status not long ago. The 1,864 Giant Pandas left in the wild are solitary and territorial, except for brief mating seasons. You know, like other bears. And, like bears on this side of the world, their habitat is under constant pressure. Left to their own devices the population would survive, but there are always outside influences to consider.

In captivity, the 600+ Pandas living behind bars give the species its widely reported reputation for a libido lower than the bottom bracket on my mulleted hardtail. Captive breeding programs are intended to revitalize the population while their habitat is repaired or reinstated. The Giant Panda also acts as a super-cute-and-huggable-looking mascot for other at-risk animals.

To zoo, or not to zoo. It’s a complex question better left to experts writing in peer-reviewed science journals rather than accused sell-outs writing for re-startup de-zombified mountain bike publications. But if you’ll allow me the leeway, the same way that our greater world would be much less interesting without the bamboo munching Ursidae, the mainstreaming of mountain biking deserves careful consideration for any folks who’d like to see it stay a bit, well, weird.

I’ve written regularly about the rising interest in riding janky, technical mountain bike terrain on fully-rigid mountain bikes – which some of my friends affectionately call ‘Double Hardtails’ after the term was coined by a stunned fellow traveler – while the availability of the large volume, properly knobby, front tires that make these bikes enjoyable is increasingly challenged.

Like the tires themselves, I imagine this piece will be it for writing about my two favourite 29+ tires. The high grip, and almost high-enough volume, 29x2.8” WTB Vigilante in their ‘High Grip’ rubber option is officially unavailable to buy. I have one brand-new tire left, which was a gift. I just had my local Trek dealer order me four 29x3.0” Bontrager XR4 , on their awesome clear-out deal, and Trek has confirmed that once they sell through their current inventory they will not be making more.

Two Tired Technicalities

Plus-tires, 27+ & 29+, have suffered from an image issue since day one. They are not the fastest option for any racing application that mountain bikers care about, and they lack the precision that racers and riders on the bleeding edge of mountain bike performance demand. A 29x3.0” Bontrager XR4 is, in other words, not a substitute for a MaxxGrip Maxxis DH Assegai or a Super Race Schwalbe Racing Ralph.

The problem is that most of us, consciously or subconsciously, don’t like to admit that we’re less than. With more focus on sidewall support and a pendulum swing towards tire weight being a lesser consideration – which we’ve experienced anyway but be ready to duck because the weight-weenie revival is right around the corner – Plus-sized rubber could have, should have, and would have been a good choice for a significantly greater percentage of riders than who truly gave it a shot. It's all about the increased margin of error, in exchange, yes, for a decrease in precision, which comes from the wider footprint and lower pressure.

Four quick points to rebut the most common derisions I hear to the above thinking:

1. Yes, early Plus-tired bike reviews were bad. This was down to rims that were significantly too narrow and tires that were miles too light & flimsy. (Thanks, Specialized)
2. The only company I know of that did back-to-back testing (quantitative timing & qualitative feedback) of regular riders was Pivot, with their Switchblade V1 , and they found the overwhelming majority were faster and had more fun on big rubber.
3. You’re not an elite racer (unless you are, in which case, my apologies for excluding you in my generalization).

Have you actually-actually measured the casing on your 2.6” tire? Most of them are just 2.4” tires with bigger side knobs stuck on

Now, to my point number three, yes, multiple people have already pointed this out to me. Okay, so what? Jeff Kendall-Weed don’t gotta Plus on his bike to ride rigid? Well, I do, so f*** him and f*** you too!

I joke, I joke, I kid, I kid, but the point stands that JKW rips a bike, any bike, and Andrew Major, like most folks I know, isn’t that smooth in his dreams. Never mind kathunk-kathunk-kathunking down chunky trails or trying to ride ‘square’ over round, greasy, tentacle-monster roots. I get it, some folks come with hover mode. I, and the vast majority of folks reading this, do not.

Of course, none of this matters a single pull of a brake lever. The masses have spoken and anything larger than a 2.6” 29’er tire is for weirdos. Folks buying into the rigid revival, with great geometry and brakes on tap, will have to choose between running a smaller wheel diameter and taking advantage of the decent availability of 27+ tires, for now, or choose to try and find just the right mix of pressure and support to run a 2.6” tire on a 29” hoop.

Not me though. I’ve been riding rigid bikes on technical trails for a couple of decades now, trying to keep up with my friends on hardtails and sag wagons and ride the same lines I hit on a full-suspension rig. A massive front tire makes it awesome, and I have zero interest in returning to smaller rubber, which is what brought me to this piece in the first place.

Once I’d confirmed that Bontrager was moving on from their excellent, but never updated, 29+ project, the Stache, and their excellent XR4 tire (the slightly heavier duty SE4 being retired some time back) I started feeling nervous about what my rigid future would look like. I do have a fantastic 120mm Manitou R7 Pro that plugs perfectly into my single speed.

The alternative option was to open a zoo and keep enough of this soon-to-be-extinct rubber in captivity to last me for a while until the return-of-rigid either fizzles or catches fire. Plus-tires, for whatever reason, outlast smaller rubber by a significant margin, and then add in the massive internal support from inserts and I now have years to figure it out.

Either there will be good – emphasis on good – big-big knobby options available again to support folks who want to mountain bike without suspension, or, I fear, the rising number of riders mountain biking on a rigid Stooge, Unit, etc. are never going to get to enjoy the true offroad potential of their bike.

One nice thing about hoarding 29+ rubber, I suppose, is that I’m not worried about sitting on ‘outdated’ tires when the new-new rubber shows up. Imagine hoarding DHFs just before the Assegai became popular. Why, you’d be stuck with a pile of awesome rubber to burn through with all your friends raving about the slight performance improvement of the brave new option at the tip of the World Cup DH sphere. Another nice thing about it is buying the tires on sale. At least, that’s what I was telling myself when I was coming up with the treasure to buy them along with territory in our living space to store them.

Store them. Storing tires was of course the crux of it all. Who wants to buy them, put them away, and then have them go to shit before they ever get ridden? Coming up with the cash to buy clear out tires is one thing, but just burning the money on rubber that will need to be recycled before being ridden would suck. How to hoard? How. To. Hoard.

Anyway, I reached out to Nick Anger at Trek Bikes with the basic question. If some idiot (me) wanted to stockpile tires and ride on in 120tpi 29+ bliss long after the pluspocalypse, what’s the best practice for keeping those ‘Team Issue’ treads feeling fresh? Here’s what he had to say:

• “A temperature-controlled room is usually pretty darn good.”
• “If you want to take things a step further, I would remove them from packaging and store them in circle form (not folded up) and laid flat.”
• “If you want to go to the extreme you can toss them in a garbage bag and vacuum seal it. But really, only if you’re planning on storing them for many years!”

I’ve jumped on the first two bullets. Prior to Nick’s e-mail, I would not have considered vacuum-sealing tires in a hundred years of weird notions, but I admit I’ve had two proper daydreams about it now.

Now that I have mine – and by mine, I mean a small collection of 29+ tires as well as a couple of i40-ish rims to mount it on – I wanted to throw this out there for other folks riding rigid bikes or who are rigid-curious. I know in the grand scheme of things riding technical terrain on a rigid fork isn’t going to take-off, but even if it’s 50,000:1 between eebs and rigid rigs I still think there’s going to be a corresponding hunger for 29+ setups.

If I’m wrong, I’m covered with tires for a while and, if I’m right, I’m covered with tires for a while. Either way, I’m good. But for folks who’ve been considering adding a rigid mountain bike to their stable or throwing up their hands and converting to the joy of rigid for their only bike, I’d recommend picking up a tire or two before they’re gone. Assuming the combination of available treasure and trove of course.

Worst case scenario, you can always sell it again to me, or folks like me, as the 29+ options go from at risk, to endangered, to extinct and our captive hoards are unable to reproduce.