Originally Posted by
Jack Rimer
Honestly, this is the first I have heard about our tires peeling. I'm not saying it hasn't happened (obviously it has if you say so), but in the thousands and thousands of tires we have made, I had NO idea it was an issue. You mention that the first thing you do when you get our tires is "peel the outside edge 5-7mm". How is this possible? I just went into the back and took 50-75 tires and tried to peel them. There was no way the foam was coming off. We roughen every wheel and then use super glue to bond the foam to the wheel. This doesn't mean that from time to time a few tires get through that aren't glued as well as others, but it would seem to me that if it was as much of a problem as you say we would have heard about it. Since we warranty tires for coming unglued, and we have not had any returns, I would have no way of knowing this was an issue.
By the way, we intentionally make our wheels more flexible to prevent breakage. Trust me, it is much better to have people complain about flex than to have them be upset about breaking a wheel. We don't feel the flex compromises the performance so we tend to lean towards caution.
Among racers it has been a known issue for a long time, but since they are the best priced tires on the market with the best selection of compounds available we just deal with it. From what I have seen the peeling issue only happens with the rear tires. At my local club race I have one full set of tires per run, that way I can re-glue the peeled tires between race days when I true them again. I've had this happen on double pinks, magentas, and yellows. The warranty is great in theory but the tires are inexpensive enough that people are not going to bother with it, and if we kept sending in our tires when they peeled we'd be out of tires all the time. I think I bent one in my last race...I'll see if that is peeling and send it in. I'll need an address to send it to. I wonder if the peeling issue we've seen might be because of the rim being flexible...CA is rather brittle so if the rim flexes there it may be cracking the CA.