Comments on: Continental Mountain King 2.4″: Update

By: Vandal

Vandal — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:28:56 +0000

I just returned from a week of riding these tires in Moab, Fruita, Grand Junction, Gallup and Sedona. I converted them to tubeles using Stan’s yellow tape on a ZTR Arch rim. The conversin process was totally pain-free. No sudden blow-offs and no weeping of the Stan’s goop through pores in the sidewalls.
Two days of Moab wore off the detail on the center treads. They worked pretty well in the sand on Poison Spider, but not quite as well as my old Bontrager XR tires. They felt great on the sketchy, rocky back-side descent on the Portal Trail
They felt confident railing the hardpack corners in Fruita and handled the steep, loose and rocky switchback descent of the IMBA Epic Edge Loop. There was no sign of damage to the sidewalls after riding the sharp rocks on the Ribbon Trail and Andy’s Loop at the Lunch Loops in Grand Junction.
The singletrack in Gallup was dry, dusty and soft and when leaning into the fast, flat corners, I had a few sudden wash-outs, but so did my buddies on Nevegals.
The terrain in Sedona is loose and rocky and these tires clawed their way up every chute without breaking traction.
Back at home, the damp rocks of the Niagara Escarpment at Hilton Falls proved to be a non-issue.
I think the key here is tubeless with low pressure. When I first put these tires on, I went for a ride at almost 40 psi and the tires felt vague and squirmy. With the round casing and tall knobs, this is not surprising. Once I dropped the pressure to sub-30 psi, the bigger footprint allowed the tread to really grip and conform to everything under it, including wet limestone.
I have no complaints about these tires and will continue to use them for all may trial riding until they wear out. The icing on the cake is that one tire weighs 730 grams and the other weighs 710 grams. Not bad.

By: The Monkey

The Monkey — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:10:44 +0000

I found the MKs to be very squirrely on hardpack. On the last ride I did with mine, I felt the tires squirming under me on the road to the trail head. When climbing dry technical rooty rocky sections in a straight line, the knobs did a good job of biting in, but, on anything wet, if the obstacle happened to be on an angle, they would slide. I think the casing isn’t stiff enough for the depth of the tread, which is also quite gummy. I think it would be an OK muddy or loose conditions tire, but only it you didn’t have a lot of hard surfaces to deal with.
YMMV though.

By: Martin H

Martin H — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:58:31 +0000

I’ve been running MKs for the last three months and its been pretty wet. They have become my favourite wet condition tyre. This week after some prolonged sunshine and warmth was their first outing in the dry - a mix of hardpacked single track and loose, gravely climbs and they performed well. Seems like we have a good all rounder tyre finally.

Another three months of this and I’ll be able to see how well they wear.

By: Guitar Ted

Guitar Ted — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:36:37 +0000

Desert9r: So far, I’ve avoided pavement or any hardpack, (since its been sooo wet here lately!) so I can not really comment on that yet. I will say that it survived El Paso rocks with flying colors.

By: Desert9r

Desert9r — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:05:18 +0000

How is the tread lasting? good enough to be an all-purpose tire?

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:29:06 +0000

I have been running the 2.4 Mountain King on the front of my Carver 96er SS with a Pace carbon fork. Running a Nevegal 2.3 on the rear. No problems climbing hard and the front is rock solid in corners and over roots & rocks. I have developed more confidence in technical conditions and in going fast into corners using this tire set up in the woods of NH.