Tested & Ridden | Conti Ultra Sport II Tyres

Tested and Ridden: Continental Ultra Sport II tire test

A couple of years back I had been riding on the Continental Ultra Sport tires, with positive results and a fair amount of high praise for their road bike rubber. The Ultra Sport’s provided good performance at a great price and you can’t beat that in my book!

Then in 2013 I stumbled on a set of Vittoria Zaffiro Pro Slicks and the love affair with the Conti’s promptly ended. Not that I thought the Conti’s weren’t a solid set of tyres, but the Pro Slicks had them beat…

Subsequently and much to my disappointment, Vittoria stopped making the very affordable and sticky Zaffiro Pro Slicks. At about 30-35 bucks for a set, with the very same compound as the Rubino…I suppose Vittoria got a bit greedy (or embarrassed) and didn’t want their low cost set of tires performing as good as their top line donuts…

So, for me it was back to the Ultra Sports. But little did I know that Continental had improved on the original Ultra Sport, with a new compound, called PureGrip. Enter the Ultra Sport II folding beaded tires, which I had purchased for a set price of $40.95 on Amazon. After a only a few miles I knew these were every bit as good as the Zaffiro Pro Slicks. The Ultra Sport 2’s are excellent tires at a great price point.

To date, I have about 1,850 miles on the 700 x 25c set and they have been impressive to say the least. I typically run about 98-102 psi in the rear and about 95-98 psi up the front. Initial bite is very good and under normal and under hard braking, thanks to a well rounded profile. The Conti US II tyres adhere flawlessly, edge grip is very good and consistent through fast sweepers or tight corners/esses, and I tend to really lean the bike over and push the front at times as well.

So far I have had no break of traction on many types of varying terrain in both dry and wet road conditions. The ultra sport’s soak up irregular terrain and small bumps with ease. Overall, the Ultrasport II’s get 4-stars for both effort and performance in my riding opinion.

According to Continental, PureGrip is based on activated silica compounds and the technology was originally intended as an performance level compound, but after intensive development at their Korbach Research and Development Facility, an advanced new compound with outstanding grip and cross-country properties was developed. This new rubber mix, given the self explanatory name “PureGrip”, is ranked just behind their top of the line  BlackChili Compound.

Suspension Losses Confirmed

Great post from BQ and Heine “Higher tire pressures don’t result in faster speeds – even on smooth pavement. Replicating results is a crucial part of science, which makes the new results an important milestone in the understanding of bicycle performance. No longer is it just Bicycle Quarterly talking about suspension losses and lower tire pressures – the science is becoming widely accepted.” (well, hopefully it is!) (Though there are plenty of Luddite-Thinkers out there…who still run 120, 130 psi on road tires… ugh) The many False Narratives in cycling are enough to make one ill…

Off The Beaten Path

Recently, Bicycle Quarterly’s experiments on suspension losses have been replicated and confirmed: Higher tire pressures don’t result in faster speeds – even on smooth pavement. Replicating results is a crucial part of science, which makes the new results an important milestone in the understanding of bicycle performance. No longer is it just Bicycle Quarterly talking about suspension losses and lower tire pressures – the science is becoming widely accepted.

When Bicycle Quarterly’s tire tests (below) showed that higher pressure didn’t make your tires faster, few people believed it. Back in 2007, everybody “knew” that pumping up your tires harder made them faster.

We had doubts, too. So we tested again and again, and our results always were the same. We concluded that it was true, even if it went against the accepted wisdom of almost 100 years of cycling knowledge.

Looking through the literature and talking to experts like Jim Papadopoulos, we found a mechanism that could…

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Optimizing Tire Tread

More excellent informative tire data from Jan Heine

Off The Beaten Path

Most tire manufacturers agree that supple sidewalls and a thin tread make a tire fast, but the role of the tread pattern remains poorly understood. Most modern tires have either a completely smooth tread (slicks) or a coarse tread pattern similar to car tires. Many high-performance tires are smooth with just a few large sipes. None of these tread patterns are optimized.

Car tires have tread mostly to prevent hydroplaning. With their wide, square profile, a layer of water can form between tire and road surface. The tread pattern forms channels so the water can be pushed out of the tire/road interface.

Bicycle tires do not hydroplane. Their contact patch is too small and too round for that. This means that car-inspired tread patterns are not necessary on bicycle tires. Does this mean that no tread pattern at all – a slick tire – is best? Any tread pattern reduces…

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