Let me give you a summary of my experience from this past summer, orb:
I took delivery of my Raven in late April, and installed on it 26 x 1.6 Schwalbe Marathon Supreme foldabless. My choice was based on Andy Blance's recommendation on the Thorn Cycles website, and also on Graham Smith's review of these tires on CGOAB:
http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/reviews/board/message/?o=Sh&thread_id=350687&page=1&nested=0&v=2JI installed the 1.6 Supremes because I expected to do most of my riding with the Raven (touring & recreational) on sealed (tarmac) roads -- probably 90% or more, in line with Andy Blance's guideline. Over the summer, I've done about 2500 kms, including a couple of tours, a short one of some 500 kms in Eastern Ontario in June, and a longer one of some 1400 kms in Denmark, Sweden, and northern Germany, from late August to mid-September.
The Supremes are very nice tires indeed -- comfortable, grippy, secure in the rain, light, and easily mounted/removed. They also fit very well with the VO 26 x 650b alloy fenders (mudguards) which I have on my Raven. (For a week or so in May, when I was waiting for the Supremes to arrive, I used Marathon 1.75's. These filled the space between rim & fender much more completely than the 1.6s, and felt heavier and slower on the ride -- although I did not use the Marathons with any load.) The Spremes have substantial puncture protection in the central part of the tire, and their flexible sidewalls play a major part in the quality of the ride that they offer.
BUT. In less than 3000 kms, I had two cuts in the sidewalls of my Supremes, one in the front tire on the short tour in June, and one in the rear in early September in Sweden. The first of these was a minor cut, less than a cm long and about a cm from the rim, towards the tread of the tire. The cut was barely through the sidewall, and made a slight abrasion on the tube, but did not cut it. I noticed the slight bubble in the sidewall after I returned home. I made a repair (details below), and I probably put another 200 kms on the tire with no problem while I was waiting for Schwalbe North America to send me a new tire. (My LBS had problems getting Schwalbe tires from their North American depot in Seattle this summer -- seems there had been a major problem which restricted their ability to supply retailers, although they did continue to supply individual customers via online purchases.)
The second sidewall cut, on the rear tire, was more serious, a deep cut about a cm long perpendicular to the edge of the rim, with a slightly smaller cut in the tube as well. I managed to repair this cut as well, securely enough to last another 45 kms to to next town in Southern Sweden, where I purchased from a very helpful bike shop a 26 x 1.75 Continental Tour Ride. With that, I finished my ride, another 250 kms to Berlin.
What caused the cuts? I can't be sure, but this is my reckoning:
> The first one, the minor cut on the front tire, happened on a short tour entirely on good-to-fair tarmac, mostly rural. At one point, I had to go over a tree branch about the thickness of my forearm which was lying across my path at the edge of the road. (There was a monster great Dodge one-ton pickup truck coming up on my left shoulder, so evasive action was impossible.) The Raven handled the branch just fine, but I suspect I picked up the tire damage in the process.
> The more serious cut in my rear tire was a complete surprise: I was rolling west along a quality bike path beside the Baltic, admiring the scenery & wondering about the squally sky, when I heard a loud "pop!" from the rear. I'd seen no debris on the path at all, so assumed I had a puncture of some kind. The tire was completely flat, and I quickly saw the cm-long cut near the rim. I had done maybe 75 - 100 kms in total on gravel, sand and dirt (forest) roads in Denmark and Sweden, usually in good condition, but occasionally with larger stones in the gravel. (This was about 6-7% of my total distance to that point.) Maybe the cut in the sidewall had occurred earlier on one of the stony/gravelly roads, and the tube had been damaged at the same time, with the damage to the tube gradually worsening until the tube split open. Or, maybe there was debris on the spiffy bike path beside the sea.
What to make of all this? I had three conversations with bike shops in Sweden and Berlin, where I asked the mechanics/owners about my experience and What To Do In Future. A range of replies:
i) The guy from whom I bought the Continental, in Ystad, Sweden, reckoned that the Tour Ride was a better bet for touring than the Supreme.
ii) The owner of my daughter's LBS, a well-respected shop in Berlin, reckoned I'd had bad luck. It can happen, he said, but your experience seems a bit exceptional.
iii) Then I spoke with the owner of another nearby LBS which is a Schwalbe specialist retailer. We had an extended discussion about tires on 2-wheelers--he also rides a 1981 Honda Bol d'Or, the 1100 cc six, which puts rather more stress on the rear tire than I do on my Raven (or for that matter on Hans, my '86 airhead.) He praised the Supremes, which he uses himself, but reckoned that one should use them only on tarmac if poss -- though he also showed me a carcass which had been seriously shredded by the bottom of a broken beer bottle on a Berlin street one Sunday morning. He had specific advice: if you use these tires, run 4 bars pressure (nearly 60 psi) at the front, and 4.5 (65) at the rear -- maybe even more in the rear if loaded, close to the max of 5.0 bars / 70 lbs.
My conclusion: I really like these tires, but I'll seek yet another opinion from my LBS here in Ottawa before making a final decision on keeping or changing the Supremes. As I expect to continue touring mainly on tarmac, I'm inclined to stay with the tires, using higher pressures (60 psi front, 65 rear)
and carrying a spare (as well as my repair kit below).
And about the repair. Here's the drill I used --
> I wasn't carrying a section of old tire-without-bead, mainly because I had no tires around the workshop of the right curvature.
> I repaired both cuts using Tear-Aid, Sugru, and the Presence of Ms Windsor, the Kwean, on a new (plasticized) Canajan $20 bill, thus:
i) Place a strip of Tear-Aid, about 3 cms x 4-5 cms, lengthwise over the cut on the inside of the tire. With the more serious cut, which went close to the folding bead, I used a longer strip and lapped that over the bead.
ii) Then cut a strip of Tear-Aid about the same size and mount that across the first strip and parallel to the bead. We now have two strips of Tear-Aid, criss-crossed over the cut on the inside of the tire.
iii) Take your $20 bill (or $5, etc.) and tape that over the Tear-Aid, parallel to the bead. I used hockey tape, and lapped it over the edge of the bead. (The Royal Visage gets a bit smudged and besmirched, but it's all in support of a citizen's well-being...)
iv) Fill the cut on the
outside of the tire with sugru [see sugru.com] -- let it cure, and add some more if necessary.
v) Sprinkle some talc into the tire, and insert your new or repaired tube in the the usual way. Reflate, and press on regardless. (I now have a couple of damaged-and-repaired Supreme tires, one of which, the more damaged one, can be a source of a tire boot for my tool kit.)
Hope this helps, orb -- good luck! I'll post the results of my decision on continuing with the Supremes for tarmac touring.
Cheers,
John
