Marathon xr tyres

[salar55]

Anyone selling marathon xr tyres, looking for the folding versions. Going to bin my stash of wired ones, had 2 issues with the wire in the bead. Got them ages ago and my kevlar ones are almost done now. Were the best tyres for off road touring, bought marathon extreme tyres for the dirt roads in South America but are overkill for Europe.

[quixoticgeek]

Isn't the mondial the replacement for the XR?

J

[salar55]

The tread pattern is more suited to road, a version with wider gaps and chunkier would be nice. Would not want to be on muddy or sandy tracks with them.

[Brucey]

 Marathon XR varies depending on when it was made; the biggest practical difference is how open the tread shoulders are which can make a big difference to offroad grip







the Mondial (last photo) is (I guess) somewhere in the middle between the various different XR versions....?

cheers

[Frank9755]

I bought a pair of XRs for a tour in Tibet, after having had bad advice from the group I was going with.  Most of the riding was on smooth tarmac so they were the wrong tyres.  Mine were so tough and heavy, like tractor tyres.  They were the most horrible tyres I've ever had!

[bludger]

I know you can still get schwalbe land cruisers online - they look pretty similar to XRs from where I'm sitting. Pretty wallet friendly too.

[salar55]

XR tyres are not suitable for the road unless loaded up. Only used with the tandem or mtb loaded up for camping on the road/dirt. I would imagine if it was a group ride it was fully supported. The Dutch and German cycletouring community loved them.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I don't believe that XR have the foam puncture protection layer (found in greenguard marathons etc). It is my impression that XR are used as the base tyre for the Winter Marathons; they don't have the puncture resist layer.

[andrew_s]

XR were nothing like Marathon Winter.

Grip and rolling resistance weren't target properties; long life was.

Their place in life was for use by transcontinenal tourists, riding things like UK to Oz, or Barrow to Ushuaia, where they may end up doing several thousand miles on gravel roads, and didn't want their tyres to decide to wear out in the middle of nowhere.
My pair have done about 2500 miles, about half of which was on gravel (including Tibet, where, at the time, tarmac was limited to the Lhasa to airport road (pre tunnel), about 10 miles either side of Xigatsu, and actually inside anything else that may qualify as a town). The state of wear is "lost most of the flashing".