We have a Racing Ralph or two here now and a few observations about them. First, let’s take a look at the specifics and the features of the new Racing Ralph 29″er tires.

The Racing Ralph was redesigned for 2007 and with that came a new 29″er size in two widths. The two 29″er sizes are 2.25″ and 2.4″. We have the 2.4″er here and we expect a couple 2.25″ers sometime in the future. The new Racing Ralph features Scwalbe’s Evolution Carcass, U-Block tread design, and lower rolling resistance all in a lightweight package. The weights listed for the two 29″er widths are 580 grams for the 2.25″ and 640 grams for the 2.4″ tire. Our sample weighed in at 630 grams, so right about where it should be.

The first thing I noticed when getting the Racing Ralph was the tread blocks which seemed evenly spaced about the carcass, but were a bit shorter than a lot of tires out there. Almost a “low tread” design, but not quite. The tire felt very supple in the hand and the sidewalls felt fairly thick, not paper thin like a few 29″er tires I have tried here.

The mounting was a bit of a chore, to say the least. The Scwalbe Racing Ralph is so flexible that it doesn’t really want to hold a shape. It kept popping out of the rim well and flopping around like a jellyfish. I finally got it corralled and aired it up on a Stan’s Flow rim sans tube but with no sealant. (Note: Scwalbe specifically discourages using non-UST tires as tubeless. This will void the warranty and may lead to premature tire failure because of sealant incompatibility issues) I just wanted to see if the tire would be as big as I’ve heard it to be on this rim. Well, the tire seated and aired up to 30psi long enough for me to get a caliper measurement of 57.5mm for the casing width. After that little experiment, I put a tube in it and mounted it up on a DT Swiss TK 7.1 disc rim. After getting it to seat up and pressured to 30 psi, I took a casing measurement of 55mm. The tire was noticeably rounder in profile on the DT Swiss rim and not as flat looking as it was on the Stan’s rim. The measurements reflect this, I think.

I feel the flexibility of the casing is the reason that the tire is so influenced by rim width. Here’s what Schwalbe has to say about the casing:

EVOLUTION CARCASS - All technical innovations flow first into these top tires, as for example the highly flexible Evolution carcass and unique triple compound. This carcass is made up with a 67 tpi count, it’s important to note that we publish our thread count per carcass layer. What this means is the total count is 201 tpi. The high quality of this tire is underlined by the use of new graphics: Silver with white border.

That high thread count seems to be why the tire is so flexible, hard to mount, and why it seems to stretch for a lot of people according to reports I have read. Hopefully it will also translate into a faster rolling tire as well. We’ll be testing this as we go along.

As far as the size, it is the biggest 29″er tire I have had on a bike around these parts. Slightly bigger than the WTB WeirWolf that is pictured on my bike above, but only by a millimeter or so. In terms of casing height, it’s on par with the WTB tire. Use that information as a baseline for fit in terms of other frames out there. It may be that a wider rim will render the tire too big to fit in some frames. This is also something we’ll look into as we go along.

Stay Tuned! more to come in the coming weeks!