Schwalbe Marathon Plus

[EdinburghFixed]

I assumed there would be a topic for these, but I couldn't find one!

I fitted a pair of Marathon Plus 700x25 to my Touché yesterday after finally getting fed up of a long run of flats on my heavily-used GP4000s-es.

They cost me £41 delivered from Spa Cycles.

I won't comment on the puncture proofing yet - maybe after a few months - but I wanted to drop a quick note on my other impressions.

They are very heavy! I knew this and felt it was an ok trade-off for the winter months, but really I was unprepared for the horror of adding 1.6kg of tyre to my 7.5kg bike!

If you have decent skinny tyres and wonder whether Marathon Pluses will feel like you are riding through an inch of mud - they do!

Fitting - not hard in the way I expected (i.e. they are not particularly tight), but the protective layer is so rigid that I kept pushing the opposite bead right off the rim and it took me more than 20 minutes of pain in the end!

Tread - the photos I've seen make it look almost like 'decorative' tread (the swooshes and waves you see on various slick tyres) but in fact they have a honest to goodness old fashioned 'off-road' tread, in miniature. Handy if you ride dirt paths but I don't!

The grip seems ok but I didn't have the same confidence in the wet which I used to on the GP4000s-es.

Finally I think they may be quite big for their size. 23 to 25mm shouldn't make a huge difference but they feel very different, squashy and not as lively at all.

So to sum up - this is only a tyre to consider if you prioritise puncture proofing over the enjoyment of your ride (in my opinion) - I would struggle on the weekend club run if I didn't swap them back, which half defeats the purpose

But, they are supposed to be the last word in puncture proofness, in which case I'll put up with them... but roll on Spring!

[Si]

I got some for my 26inch wheeled roughtstuff/expo bike (Dawes One Down - like a Sardar) and one for my commuter.

Cost I think was £12 for the pair (unused) at a cycle jumble.

In use for over a year.

No p*nct*res yet in either.

Comfort - extremely good - blown up to 100psi they still give a great ride.

Getting them on and off the rims - no problems.

Speed - not fast. I wouldn't go as far as to say that they are like "riding through an inch of mud", but then the bikes that they are on were not the fastest to start with, however something like my old IRC Metros feels faster on the same bikes.

Grip- on road - great, have no trouble with those narrow, potholed, muddy, overgrown Shropshire lanes.

Grip- off road - never going to be as good as something with proper MTB tread , but none the less they stood up to the more challenging sustrans paths (such as the Mercian Way during the flooding that washed the surface away), fire roads, etc.

Nice reflective side walls too.

[EdinburghFixed]

Nice reflective side walls too.

I forgot to mention that!

Very bling...

[fatboy]

Nice reflective side walls too.

I've got a marathon on the back of my bike and it gets dirty so quickly to be completely useless which is a shame. I guess it might work better on the front......

[BTFB]

I have 28's on my galaxy and they have taken me the length of Germany to switzerland and also a ride down to the med and not one single puncture..in fact I only had to inflate the tyre 2 or 3 times in all those miles. I dont think they are that heavy...I have 23's on my bianchi and to be honest i can ride just as fast on thegalaxy.

[james01]

I've got 700 x 28s, also 26 x 1.75s, and have enjoyed excellent puncture resistance for a couple of years regular riding. Certainly a bit slower than a lightweight skinny, but in the surfaces around here it's a price worth paying. And they've got a proper dynamo track.
Ref the mounting problems where the tyre peels off as quickly as you try to mount it, this has been covered in previous posts - just secure the tyre to the rim with a bungee or similar as you work your way around.

[tog]

Brilliant tyres - 2 years no punctures! For commuting I want the reliability at the expense of the speed. When found deflated one morning investigation revealed that it was an (pre-M+) earlier repair to the inner tube that had died.....

I replaced them this month to change from 700x32 to 700x28 but had to buy Continentals - first trip and the 'P Fairy' visited, grrrrrr!

[andyf]

great tyres for robustness.
Very hard to get on (I use the VAR tool) but worth it.
A little heavy on the ride, but I do find cornering better than with Contis.
I think they are slightly large - 28s seems more or less like Conti 32s to me.

[rogerzilla]

I tried and failed to fit the 25c version to some narrow rims, so had to sell them on. M+ work pretty well on a Brompton, where a puncture is a right faff due to the greasy chain tensioner and the stupid lack of a QR for the brakes.

Unless you ride in real urban-warfare conditions, most Vredestein tyres labelled as "PRS" are extremely good at repelling punctures, with no apparent weight or drag penalty.

[thirdcrank]

Unless you ride in real urban-warfare conditions, most Vredestein tyres labelled as "PRS" are extremely good at repelling punctures, with no apparent weight or drag penalty.

I bought a fairly large section (37mm ?) Vredstein very cheap, probably under a fiver, and it's been on the back of my shopper since about 1999. I think the furthest it's ever been ridden is to Mirfield and back, perhaps a 15 mile round trip, more usually used on 5-6 mile utility trips. With Nexus 7 hub gear, chain guard and all the rest of it, it's not a bike I should want to puncture on and the Vredstein never has. (Most urban roads round here have plenty of broken glass etc.)

[Ben Lovejoy]

If you have decent skinny tyres and wonder whether Marathon Pluses will feel like you are riding through an inch of mud - they do!

Check your pressures - there's no way they should feel like that. The rolling resistance is surprisingly low.

I'm a huge fan of Marathon Plus. No you-know-whats in almost a year, including some pretty dodgy surfaces, and excellent grip, wet and dry.

Ben

[Simon L6]

good-ish on the Brompton. Wouldn't put them on a road bike (and, yes, I know they'd be a different size...)

[PW]

Fitted them to a winter/towpath commuting hack. They did over 4,000 miles with 1 puncture and no noticeable wear, preformance was reasonable for a tank of a mountain bike doing 5 mile commute trips and they're still going somewhere in Germany as my daughter in law now uses the bike for shopping and child transport.

[johnmac]

PW, what caused the puncture?

[PW]

It was a tiny sliver of glass, I don't know how long it had been embedded as I'd been riding the towpath all week and the bike was ditched.
1 in 4,000 - odd miles isn't bad though.