Continental X-King 35c - Folding

javidr

Hi

Anybody know this tyre? How good is it on tarmac?

Thanks

Monty Dog

Riding a knobbly tyre on tarmac always creates the risks of 'break-out' so don't expect the same level of grip when cornering. I have some X-Kings on my MTB that sees a bit of tarmac for my mixed commuting route - it does roll surprisingly well for an MTB tyre, but you do get a bit of buzz

javidr

Which tyre would be good for road and will still work fine on the mud?

After that, i have a strange ability to puncture the tyres easily. I had to buy some schwalbe marathon for my falcon... Does this tyre bring puncture protection?

bobley

I rode in this morning using my Clement PDXs on the XLS. They went surprisingly well on the 10 miles of tarmac and then did well on 5 miles of mud. It would've been nice to have a couple more psi in them on the tarmac and couple less in the mud but you cant have everything!

They're set up tubeless with some Stans sealant fluid inside so you'd have to make a real mess of the tyre to loose pressure.

If I see you on saturday you can give them a try yourself Javi.

ugo.santalucia

JaviDR wrote:

Which tyre would be good for road and will still work fine on the mud?

After that, i have a strange ability to puncture the tyres easily. I had to buy some schwalbe marathon for my falcon... Does this tyre bring puncture protection?

None.

I find Vittoria XN to be very good on tarmac and dry off road... it can handle a bit of soft ground, but no mud. Mud tyres are crap on tarmac... but that also depends on your expectations... I do ride the XG on tarmac and you still get where you need to go.
I had a pair of Conti Speed King in the past and they were particularly bad on tarmac

tgotb

One workaround is to vary your tyre pressures. I raced the first part of the season on XG Pros, and was training on them until it got really wet around the beginning of December. They were fine off road at ~ 20psi, and almost as fast as road tyres, with very predictable handling, at 60psi. That's not really a solution for mixed rides, but works very well if you're riding to a race or training session. You wouldn't want to go as low as 20psi for recreational rides, mind you, especially if you're using inner tubes, there'll be too much risk of pinch flats if you're not concentrating on the terrain...

Forget you're on 20psi, and you're in for a shock when you hit the tarmac!

Monty Dog

For mixed tarmac/trail use, then a semi-slick design is your best bet - I have some WTB hybrid tyres that I bought pretty cheap a few years ago - I've used them for towpath commuting, a fair bit of singletracking plus a couple of traverses of the Southdowns Way and they're still going strong.