Specialized Armadillo failure

blorg

~20,000km in. No punctures since new. (Indeed, no punctures full stop, just looked like it was time to replace ;-)

milod

"now this is what I am talking about..."

Bloody good tyres - I swear by them, and occasionally at them when they dump me off the bike in the wet!

You must have been kerbing them though, they usually last much longer ;-)

Morgan

Looks grand, you'd easily get a few more months out of it...

blorg

milod wrote: »

Bloody good tyres - I swear by them, and occasionally at them when they dump me off the bike in the wet!

I know exactly what you mean; I have slid sideways on them more than once! I'm actually going to try Continental Ultra Gator Duraskins as a replacement- they are meant to have _almost_ as good puncture protection while still being light fast and grippy. They seem have almost as many forum advocates as the Armadillos. If I get too many punctures though I'll be back to the Armadillos.

cmyk

I picked up a set of gatorskins on sat after a puncture on my first day of new bike, I'll post up any comments after using them for a while.

Heard the armadillos were a little 'slippery when wet'?

peterk19

ive been using gator skins for the past 7months or so great tyre but i found them to be slippy in the wet also but you get used to it fairly quick ive never had a puncture and they still look brand new after a lot of miles unlike the bontrager tyres i had before

Chips Lovell

I've ridden on both and I'd prefer the Gatorskins. They seem to hold the road much better. That being said, I never came down on the Aramadillos, but the Gatorskins certainly felt less sketchy when cornering.

cmyk

That's good to hear, as all the reviews I read seemed to lean towards the armadillos!

Chips Lovell

cmyk wrote: »

That's good to hear, as all the reviews I read seemed to lean towards the armadillos!

For road holding???

cmyk

For puncture resistance and overall longevity definately leaned toward the armadillos anyhow. Gatorskins seem to edge ahead on the roadholding front in the ones I've read.

Very mixed reviews on the gatorskins puncture resistance, with some saying they were crap, others saying that they've never got a flat ...leading some to believe there were actually 2 completely different batches produced.

Do a google for both, tons of reviews and speculation and you can draw your own conclusion. (I just couldn't make it to cycleways at the weekend, so that's what swung it for me, I was prepared to go with either) I'm only a commuter so I wouldn't really notice much in the handling characteristics etc.

blorg

Armadillos really are excellent for puncture protection and longevity (as was the gist of my photo) but they are also very slippy compared to other tyres I've ridden. I've also had tyres that have not been very good puncture-wise though. I'm hoping to get a good mix with the Gatorskins.

As for "just a commuter" - this is for my commuter bike and I have come off twice in the wet on Armadillos, both times at relatively low speed around corners! That's the sort of handling you can't help noticing! So I certainly wouldn't worry about your choice of the Gatorskins.

peterk19

cmyk wrote: »

For puncture resistance and overall longevity definately leaned toward the armadillos anyhow. Gatorskins seem to edge ahead on the roadholding front in the ones I've read.

Very mixed reviews on the gatorskins puncture resistance, with some saying they were crap, others saying that they've never got a flat ...leading some to believe there were actually 2 completely different batches produced.

Do a google for both, tons of reviews and speculation and you can draw your own conclusion. (I just couldn't make it to cycleways at the weekend, so that's what swung it for me, I was prepared to go with either) I'm only a commuter so I wouldn't really notice much in the handling characteristics etc.

in my experience with gator skins they are bulletproof as long as your pressure isclose to 100psi

Karma

conti over specialized any day. get some slime strips to improve you durability. a little skittish in the rain but still better than what those specialized do to you.
both are in common use with messengers, so 2 camps of thought on them(great in the dry for both!)

cmyk

blorg wrote: »

As for "just a commuter" - this is for my commuter bike and I have come off twice in the wet on Armadillos, both times at relatively low speed around corners! That's the sort of handling you can't help noticing! So I certainly wouldn't worry about your choice of the Gatorskins.

Wow, I didn't think they were that bad, kind of glad I didnt go with the armadillos now.

peterk19 wrote: »

in my experience with gator skins they are bulletproof as long as your pressure isclose to 100psi

Good advice there, next purchase is a pump with psi reading so.

niceonetom

i switched from armadillos to gatorskinz last year and wouldn't go back to be honest. i never had a puncture with the armadillos but they did throw me to the tarmac (very) occasionally in the rain. i might get a (very, very) occasional puncture on the gatorz but c'est la vie. punctures > roadrash.

the big difference i noticed was comfort. at 115psi armadillos feel like solid airless rubber, and probably have a pretty small contact patch. at the same pressure the gatorz feel much more supple and forgiving, and grippier.

that said both feel like shizzle compared to real race tires. the bike i just got came with schwalbe stelvios and (at 155psi(!)) they are so smooth and grippy it's a revelation.
...until i had a moderate-speed blow out from a giant cut in the side wall. after less than 200k.

i'm experimenting with hutchinson fusions at the moment. so far so good. touch wood. fingers crossed. rabbit's foot. and praise jebus.

blorg

In fairness the Armadillos are not "that bad" but they are slippy in the wet and don't give much room for error. The eejit on the bike played a part too but I suspect I would have stayed on with another tyre. Both were slips out to the side resulting in scuffing to bike, clothes, and me.

Chips Lovell

niceonetom wrote: »

ithe bike i just got came with schwalbe stelvios and (at 155psi(!)) they are so smooth and grippy it's a revelation.
...until i had a moderate-speed blow out from a giant cut in the side wall. after less than 200k.

You were running 155psi on clincher rims???

blorg

I am guessing it is a typo, 115 PSI like the Armadillos. That said, he did have a blowout ;-)

niceonetom

yeah typo - 125psi. they're rated for 145 though. it wasn't really a blow out, it was a cut, very clean, probably glass. i don't think my pump would get to 155.

i'm not saying that armadillos are bad btw. i still have them on my old hybrid and they've probably done about 10,000km without one puncture. they're excellent, just that i prefer the feel of gatorskinz. i think it's the sidewalls, they're much thinner/softer than the armadillos.

bunnygreen

Just put on a pair of Gatorskins Saturday,went out for the usual Sunday club spin,got caught in that rotten hail shower descending the gap,ohhhhh,thought i would'nt get down in one piece,locked the brakes up a couple of times,left a brown trail behind me,no punctures though.

BostonB

Just tonight I've swtiched my MTB from regular MTB tyres to Nimbus Armadillo. My initial impression is that is much easier to cycle with these, though they feel rock hard compared to what was on it previously. On the tyre it said 80psi, so what gives with the 100+ you guys are using?

blorg

Inflation pressure depends on the size of the tyre- 100+ PSI is generally for the thinnest road tyres, MTB tyres would never go beyond 80 PSI.

irishmotorist

Hooray! I feel less incompetent now. I've only come off the bike once in recent times and that was on a month old armadillo in the wet. I initially tried to blame the tyre but ended up putting it on my hangover and poor cornering judgement, but now it looks like I can blame the tyre again

Gavin

blorg wrote: »

Inflation pressure depends on the size of the tyre- 100+ PSI is generally for the thinnest road tyres, MTB tyres would never go beyond 80 PSI.

pish posh. My 26" x 1.3" specialized fat boys go to 100psi.

blorg

Verb wrote: »

pish posh. My 26" x 1.3" specialized fat boys go to 100psi.

OK, well almost no MTB tyres go beyond 80 PSI then. Point is optimum inflation is dependent on tyre size, and you can and should inflate thinner tyres to higher pressures, wider tyres to lower pressures.

I also suspect that while they are rated to 100 PSI max, optimum pressure for your tyres is well below that. Max on my (700x23) Schwalbe Ultremo road tyres is supposedly 145 PSI but I run them around 110. Sheldon Brown reckons in the 65-75 range for a 32mm tyre (1.3"=33mm.)

Gavin

Well, truth to tell, I run them at 80 after getting a strange bulge on the rear tyre. Good sheldon article actually, I hadn't seen that one before.

Civilian_Target

Interesting... I'm on Schwalbe Marathon Plus front and back now, and I found they've held up much better than my old armadillos did, both of the Armadillos crapped out at about 5000km (all urban though), but I've had the Marathon on the back for 17 months now, which by my reckoning gives it about 4200km, and it looks like it'd be happy for another few thousand still.

blorg

In fairness if you get 5,000km out of a tyre I don't think you have much to complain about. Marathons are certainly good tyres though, I have used them myself. One puncture but it was one of the ones that probably would have punctured anything.

I have switched from Armadillos to Gatorskins on some of my wheels and they handle a _lot_ better, I'm very happy with them- although I did get one puncture so far on the Gatorskins. Neither are as good as a proper road tyre but the Gatorskins are a lot closer than the Armadillos. I can fix a flat pretty quick these days though so I'm going to lean towards better handling at the expense of flat risk on my roadier bikes (I'll take a flat every two months or so.)