22nd April 2015
Pump Up the Volume
We aren’t ones to follow trends here at Mason Cycles, but we certainly keep an eye on things and where it makes sense and there’s a performance advantage to be had, we are all ears. Tyre volumes for road bikes have been on the up in the last few years and for bikes designed to be used with disc-brakes and in many different conditions they really make sense. Our UK road conditions are certainly variable and have really deteriorated in the last few years, skinny is arguably faster in smooth conditions but larger volume certainly makes sense when the going gets rough.
Our first two bikes, the Resolution and Definition, are designed with larger volume tyres in mind. There’s plenty of clearance for a 28 at both ends, with full size ‘guards included.
Tyre choice in the performance sector was certainly very limited when it came to larger sizes but now more and more manufacturers are paying attention to the increasing interest in big volume and starting to offer their popular models in larger sizes.
When developing our first bikes, we were particularly interested in the promised tyres from Continental and Schwalbe. Conti were developing 28mm versions of their excellent Grand Sport Extra, GP 4 Season and GP4000 tyres and Schwalbe had a 28mm tubeless in the works which we could not wait to stretch over the tubeless ready wheels that we were developing in collaboration with HUNT Bike wheels, specially for our bikes.
Between HUNT and ourselves we rode many test miles on the Conti and Schwalbe tyres. We use the Grand Sport extra and GP 4 Season for our production bikes and they are so smooth and fast that it’s really hard to go back to anything else.
Our 28c Conti tyres, coupled with wider 23mm rims, as used with the Mason x Hunt wheelset, give an improved tyre profile and increased interior volume, this allows lower pressures and increased comfort without loss of speed. Run them at 80PSI and see for yourself!