>>2008918Hello my friends!
I got new tires last week and just got back from my first real ride. I did the exact same route on these 42mm "gravel" tires as I did on my 60mm real tires that came with the bike.
The good news is that the tires did not puncture despite flying down gravel and even full on off-road grass, rocks, twigs etc. The bad news is that these tires are a much less pleasant ride than the MTB ones. In fact they suck at off road.
For the first time since getting my bike I was actively trying to stick to pavement and bike paths.
My front sus is on the softest setting and it does work on very hard hits, but on smaller hits it barely engages if at all and I really feel all the vibrations in my hands and arms and ass. Strangely the high speed downhill off road performance was similar to the MTB (since the sus was working and I was off the seat), and on ideally flat pavement there is no difference but speed. It's the middle portions where the roads suck but not enough to trigger the front sus that really feels bad.
The gravels are def faster, my best time on a "normal" commuter route with maybe 5% off road or gravel was 1:08 with MTB and 58 on the gravel tires. It's ten minutes faster for roughly the same effort.
What I want to know is how much loss in speed would I experience if I swapped the front tire back to the MTB. Is the speed benefit of the tire primarily from aero or rolling resistance? I'm going about 20km/h average over the route (it's VERY hilly) and my top speed on flat is almost never faster than 30-33km/h (I'm still getting lap'd by old men in Lycra on road bikes :*(
I suspect rolling res is more of a factor than aero but the fact that it's my front tire will probably make a lot more of a difference than the back one being fat.
Would there even be any benefit to having a MTB front and gravel rear? Also my bike is ~1.5 inches shorter end to end with the gravel tires xD