Cool, glad they are making them!

Who thought that HTLR was a cool name for a cx/grvl tire where vowels are superfluous? And why has no one ever commented on it?

  




The Grifos are definitely not a one-tire solution for PNW racing. They simply don't have enough grip for our wet days. If you're going to have only one tire, you'll lose a lot less running a bigger tread on dry days than you will running these on wet days. Especially as a less experienced CX racer.

Get something like a PDX (note the name?) or Rhino tread pattern. Maybe Baby Limus.

Helen knows what she's talking about. Good stuff.

I have no idea what Ryan weighs, but 25 psi is a *lot* of pressure for a 38 section CX tire, especially with this tread profile. Ryan didn't talk about it in his review, but the tread section of the new 38 tire has not increased in width in proportion to the increase in tire section, and the outer blocks are farther inboard on the larger tire. If you can't run low enough pressure to flatten out the profile pretty considerably, these tires are going to be slide prone. The float of the larger tire is nice, but It comes at a price. There were a couple of folks running these at the practice I coached last night, and at least one of them won't be back on them next week, just fwiw.

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Tech writer/support on this here site. FIST school instructor and certified bike fitter. Formerly at Diamondback Bikes, LeMond Fitness, FSA, TiCycles, etc.
Coaching and bike fit - http://source-e.net/ Cyclocross blog - https://crosssports.net/ BJJ instruction - https://ballardbjj.com/

Hi @mdana87, thanks for the read. I am familiar with the Wyman Tire Pressure Method, and I think it's a good place to start.

I don't have experience racing in the PNW, but from everything I've heard and seen in pics you are going to want a tire that is more suited for mud. The Limus or the Baby Limus may be good choices. But, I recommend talking to the cx veterans in your area.

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Tech Writer - Slowtwitch

Hey @fredly, thanks for the read and comments. Good point about the size of the tread profile not changing and the relative location of the outer nobs. This is very much a first impression review, and I hope to follow up after more racing in varied conditions. They were hooking up nicely in the grass and tacky dirt at 25 psi.

As for weight, I'm really heavy right now (200 lbs.) relative to historic race weights (175-180 lbs.), so I'm very much going on feel relative to current body weight for finding pressure. It's a work in progress coming back from years of not racing...

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Tech Writer - Slowtwitch

25.5 definitely starts to make sense when you're pushing 200, but it's still pretty limiting if that winds up being a pretty hard limit. Did you use the SKS gauge to benchmark your pressure? IME, comparing to known good gauges, that gauge was fairly precise but not terribly accurate...

Personally, I don't think that the traditional patterns like the Grifo are going to wind up being ideal for the larger casing sizes and higher pressures folks will want to run on tubeless setups. Even (way) back in the day when 34 was the limit, it seemed very clear that the Grifo/Typhoon was a better tire in a 32. They got pretty slidey in the max size, and this was with tubulars where you can dial the pressure way, way down to get the side blocks working.

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Tech writer/support on this here site. FIST school instructor and certified bike fitter. Formerly at Diamondback Bikes, LeMond Fitness, FSA, TiCycles, etc.
Coaching and bike fit - http://source-e.net/ Cyclocross blog - https://crosssports.net/ BJJ instruction - https://ballardbjj.com/

out of interest what pressure gauge would you recommend . cheers

@fredly, no not a hard limit, definitely dependent on course conditions and my weight gradually being reduced throughout the cx season. I was bottoming out on roots below 25 at speed, so I was erring on the side of caution in these first few rides and one race. I only have 60 miles on them, so we'll see.

As for gauges, I don't worry how accurate they are because I'm primarily going by feel and experience, which makes sharing any values not particularly helpful in a review like this for people just starting out.

Again, thanks for the read and sharing your experience.

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Tech Writer - Slowtwitch

It really depends on your use case. For cyclocross, the most important thing is precision. You will typically dial in a pressure based on riding laps, and you then want to set spare bikes/wheels to the same pressure, and/or be able to use that pressure as a baseline for subsequent events. The actual accuracy of the gauge isn't really very important.
On the other hand, if you're flirting with the upper safe limit of system tolerances or trying to dial in marginal gains using something like the Silca pressure calculator, accuracy is quite important. Ditto if you're going to offer pressure advice to other riders "Oh, I'm riding 18 psi (but really, it's 23...)". This is why I generally recommend that CX riders basically don't bother asking other folks what pressure they're riding... odds are very good they don't actually know with a meaningful degree of certainty.

It's *much* easier to find tire gauges that are fairly precise than ones that are accurate. On the positive side, ones that are accurate also tend to be fairly precise (within the specs of the instrument). This comes at a cost, though.

So... what's your use case?

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Tech writer/support on this here site. FIST school instructor and certified bike fitter. Formerly at Diamondback Bikes, LeMond Fitness, FSA, TiCycles, etc.
Coaching and bike fit - http://source-e.net/ Cyclocross blog - https://crosssports.net/ BJJ instruction - https://ballardbjj.com/