Excel Sports has both the regular Panaracer Gravel King and the Gravel King SK in all black or tan wall on sale for $32. they are Tubeless compatible. That price is hard to beat and I plan on trying a set of the 38 SK’s mounted tubeless on my CX bike for gravel rides. It seems that it is hard to find a decent tires for less than $50 these days. The GK’s are light but do have an anti-flat casing so they likely won’t be as supple as a Compass tire but definitely better than a 900g Schwalbe Marathon. FYI, it is my understanding that the Gravel Kings tend to run wide depending on your rim width. The 35 measures closer to 38 and the 38 advertised width is also marked as 40-622 and meaures 40+ on modern wider width rims. They had to relabel the old 40 as a 43.
I will say the Compass tires are pretty incredible but have paper thin sidewalls. I’ve had both the 650B Babyshoe EL and the Barlow Pass 700x38 on my bikes. You definitely trade flat resistance and durability for ride comfort. The Babyshoe Passes felt like I was riding on pillows and were very fast rolling on my old Sam. It felt like I was on a totally different bike after I switched from the Fatty Rumpkin Blues. I ended up selling it he BP’s before I had a lot of miles, but they did survive a 50 mile rough gravel ride with some sealant in the tubes. Early I got a flat from a small sticker just riding around the neighborhood so I was worried. I used to be able to get Compass tires through my LBS at a discount, but now they’ve gotten pretty dang expensive at retail price. The Barlow Pass measured closer to 36 on my RB-T but it has narrow Mavic MA-2 rims. The Baby Shoes were within .5mm of the advertised 42 width on Velocity Synergy rims. Like the previous poster mentioned, they aren’t quite as tall as some similar width tires and worked well with fenders. Another slightly cheaper alternative to Compass is the Soma Supple Vitesse. It is my understanding that they share the same high end Panaracer casing as the Compass EL and can usually be found a bit cheaper online. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
