Matt, I’d love to know when I can expect mine, but understand about not sending out all those emails - I can’t imagine how much time you’ve already got into this. I’ll just get in touch next week if I haven’t seen mine yet. Totally psyched!
Hey! Could be me 
I ordered two of them for a reason…
I weighed it again and got 1630 grams. For comparison I weighed my used Nightrider tire (with about 1500 miles on it) and got 1970 grams.
Headed to the singletrack trails! 
Sweeeet
Ordering mine tomorrow am so with this coming from the US, Triton frame from France and Wheel parts from Germany my international Uni is killing me with excitement, I am so impatient 
Starting a 36er build the week these tyres start to ship is good timing or what 
And Matt and Walt 14 months from conceptualization to customers receiving the first tyres is pretty sweet (even thought for us impatient folks it seemed like eternity :p). Thanks again chaps 
I would definitely pay extra for a road specific 36er tire with a lightweight folding bead, in the 1.85-2.0 width. With those specs I bet you could actually meet your initial 900-1000g estimate. And I bet I wouldn’t be the only one who would snap up at least two right of the bat! Combine it with the FOSS tube (or even tubeless) and it would be a total game changer, and the perfect tire for long road rides, including centuries and beyond!
My tire arrived today. Thank you Matthew Beardsly! It was a pleasure doing business with you. Add me to the list of road warriors that would buy a slick version or two. I ride distance on a multi-use paved greenway known as the Louisville Loop. And, I have to run short cranks to reach the gear shift button on a Schlumpf hub. So, I don’t see much off-road. Still, I’ve been letting a little air out of the Foss tube in my Nightrider (feels like a slick when worn and inflated to near 60 psi) each ride to get a feel for it. I’m anxious to get this badboy mounted and get started wearing those knobbies down! They say the first thousand miles are the toughest.
Full review to follow…
Terry,
Matt and company are mountain bikers and the majority of the 36er tire buyers are mountain bikers. Fourteen months and hundreds of hours spent on this project, all to provide tires for frame builders and their customers looking to create a new mountain bike standard. I would not be suprised if Matt and Walt ate some $$$ to realize the dream :o
Here are some pearls I gleamed from conversations with Matt:
-A folding bead will not save a significant amount of weight, I believe the figure is ~25-50 gms, but it would add a significant amount of cost ($50-100).
-Most of the weight is in the rubber, so A significantly lighter tire can only come from using less rubber, which will compromise structural integrity, which is then compensated by using a higher quality casing (add more dollars).
-Vee Rubber didn’t want to reduce the rubber on this tire any further for fears of tire failure, so what you see is what we get.
Having ridden this tire a lot, in my opinion any further reduction in sidewall stiffness would not be a good idea for muni users. Even running 22psi I get regular rim shots that cause air bleeds. If anything, I’d like to see a slightly more robust tire, but it would either be heavier (more rubber) or more expensive (better casing).
The choices that Matt and Walt made in terms of tire design, composition, cost, and quality are a great compromise, I don’t think anyone could have done better without creating a tire that was far more expensive.
BTW, you do realize that this is a no profit tire project, right? UDC could’t sell these tires because there is no profit once they accounted for the cost of production and shipping. So Matt and Walt are doing this thing as pet project out of their personal desire to create a 36" mountain bike tire.
The tire you are asking for would likely be twice as much or more than this tire. So you may want one, but how many more $300-400 ultralight 36" road tires can you sell? I think Matt said he ordered 200 tires to get this price with no profit. If you can come up with 200 people with $250 cash up front, maybe you could make it happen.
I’m not saying your ultralight tire is not a good idea, only that the cost of production, shipping, distribution, and profit is so high that it makes the project unfeasible.
If you want a high performance 36er road tire, you need to talk with UDC (Roger), he’s got the contacts, though don’t be suprised if they have other priorities…
I’d say you’d have better luck taking one of Matt/Walt tires and shaving down the tread, but be careful, it’s fairly soft rubber and you will be reducing the structural integrity…
Personally, if anything was going to change, I’d like to see a higher quality 36" mtb tire on rond two. I’d pay twice as much for this tire in a 1200gm weight, folding bead, higher durometer rubber, higher tpi; for a data point my second round prototype weighed in at ~1500gm.
Wow, I just re-read Matt’s comments about the intial order, so not 200 tires as I’d previously thought but 350 tires!!
The thing that made this tire possible is the interest in the mountain biking community, and because bikers need to buy two tires at a time.
For a 36" ultralight road tire, you will not get any biker support, so you would need twice as many buyers and at twice the cost of this tire, which is already more expensive than the other 36er tires…
I believe a folding bead 36er would save a lot more than a mere 25-50g over a steel bead. But be that as is may, a true road specific 36er tire would also be a lot narrower than the current 2.25, thereby using much less rubber. Ideally, a good width would be in the 1.5-1.15 range, which is still considered wide for a road tire. And there are substantially more 36er [uni] riders who ride primarily on paved roads than there are those who ride it predominately for MUni. I’m simply saying that it would make a lot of sense to have that option for a 36er tire, to compliment the ones we have now.
Btw, there are TWO steel rods (beads) roughly 9 feet long each inside a 36er tire. 18 feet of steel bead has GOT to weigh significantly more than kevlar of the same length.
First ride - wow!
I just came back from my first muni ride on this new tire on my geared KH36. I wasn’t sure how different it would feel from my Nightrider tire but I found out right away. I was amazed how much more responsive the new tire is. I could climb hills that I have never come close to climbing before (with 150 mm cranks) and easily made it up others that are usually a challenge. It felt like I was in a lower gear or had longer cranks.
I even rode some singletrack in high gear that I never even considered riding before with the Nightrider tire. I found that in high gear it was much easier to control the uni at slower speeds with this tire than it was with a heavier tire.
I should also mention that I switched to a Foss tube so some of the benefits came from a lighter tube. My Nightrider/butyl tube combo weight was 2450 grams. The new tire with a Foss tube weighed in at 1850 grams. Losing 600 grams of rotational weight sure makes a big difference.
The only road sections that I rode today were fairly flat so not much of a difference to report there.
Terry, if you get the project going, I’ll be happy to buy one from you so long as the price isn’t over $150 including shipping (don’t worry, I won’t hold my breath).
Just rode 5 miles of advanced/intermediate singletrack on the Oracle and had nearly the same experience. I was already running the stock Foss tube so the difference was noticable but probably not as much as Munimag.
Hitting rocks and roots I would catch air and fell several times where I usually don’t. Took the first few miles to adjust to the improved handling. It was easier to accelerate and climb as well. I’m very happy!
This is just what I noticed when switching from a normal Coker tube to a 29er tube back in 2005. For the first ride, it’s a little skittish, but very quickly, you adapt and it’s SO much better. Lighter is righter.
I’m also already running the Foss tube, but am still looking forward to another JND (just noticeable difference) in performance.
—Nathan
I am sure if any of you are like me you will have a bunch of justifications up your sleeve for spending money of your uni habit. Just for the record while this tire seems expensive I used the classic “well shipped to Australia it still costs less than filling my truck up with diesel twice…”. Since I commute by uni every day I figure I could buy a new tire every 6 weeks and still be financially ahead of driving to work (and that is not taking into account parking and servicing on the car).
I also received my tire today (thanks, Matt!). It weighed in at 1588g vs 2098g for my Nightrider. I was already running a 29" tube and re-installed the same tube with the new tire. The more flexible sidewalls make installation much easier than the Nightrider. I haven’t ridden it yet, but will at a least take a ride around the neighborhood tonight.
Maybe, probably not. Going from 2.25 MTB to 1.85 Road would drop ~20% of the rubber weight so you’d be looking at 1550g vs 1240g best case scenario. From what I gathered the expense of doing folding bead would be in magnitude of $100+ as it would require new tooling to produce, but we didn’t talk specifics with Vee. I am listening though, and will continue to do so regarding a road tire.
Bingo bango Ben. Current tire is compromise on lots of variables. We’d all love a 900g, folding, 120tpi, super sticky but long wearing tire right?
I DON’T think it would necessarily take 200+ tires to get a decent price on a road tire, but it would be more expensive than this one if we were able to convince someone to do less rubber/better casing and/or folding bead.
I think we’ve had majority of uni’s order so far, so THANK YOU for putting your money where mouth is. We were pretty nervous betting my money on what people said they’d do in online forums, but we’ve sold just shy of 30% of the tires so far. I’m hoping that trend continues.
I’m listening and agree. I’d use a pair on my bike for long city/greenway rides. Would a 1.5 tire really work well with the current rim? Or is there a different rim that you’d use for a “narrow” road tire?
“Rods” is more like “wires”. I thought the same thing on steel vs kevlar, and you are right in a way. Kevlar WOULD be significantly lighter than steel, but it doesn’t make up a significant portion of the total weight of the tire. So you could cut that weight in half and only go from 100g to 50g… I got the 25-50g number from the engineers at Vee, so I’m pretty sure they’re fairly close. Regardless it’s not a 500g difference.
That mimics my experience on the bike also. Thanks for the feedback. I have been fearing the thought that I’ve had “baby goggles” on regarding this tire. (Your own baby is always the cutest right? But someone has to have the ugly baby…)
Sounds great JTurner, thanks for the feedback.
BTW if you’re ever in Raleigh and wanting to ride I can try and hook you up with some local Muni riders and show you some killer trails (for central NC at least).
All paid up now the wait begins!
So does this magic Tyre mean I need to order 150mm cranks not 165mm for my build 
Terry, I agree. I’d love to have SOMEONE ELSE go through all of the trouble developing a light and skinny 36" road tire. I’d buy two of those. Meanwhile I am extremely grateful for Matt’s efforts and risk taking, so I bought two of those.
Ha! Someone else uses the JND term. I learned it back in the '80’s studying the psychology of perception. I still think in JND terms when adjusting the temperature of the shower.
Geoff