Schwalbe Furious Fred Tire

3.89/5

(9 Reviews)

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MSRP : $82.95

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Schwalbe Furious Fred TL-Ready Tire: Schwalbe's lightest and fastest race-use only tires. TL-Ready: Tubeless Ready bead, tire can be converted to tubeless with sealant or used with a tube. PaceStar: extremely fast xc compound with an...

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Reviews 1 - 9 (9 Reviews Total)

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Submitted by Christian Bratina

Date Reviewed: October 15, 2012

Strengths:    Light, FAST, great traction on both hardpack and pavement.

Weaknesses:    None.

Bottom Line:

Incredibly light at 315 gms, lighter than a lot of 700c road tires! Rolls incredibly fast on loose, hardpack, and paved roads. On my 30 year old Ritchey mountain bike, I was able to out roll most cross bikes on D2R2 paved descents. No cross bike could stay with me descending on the rough dirt roads. Handles very well and confidently on tight paved turns at 30 mph. Initially had 50 psi front/55 psi rear. Now running 40 front/45 rear on DRRs. Will try 35/40. Using the tube type. At the pressures needed for hardpack, there is no sense using tubeless with all its hassles. No flats.

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Submitted by TwoPumpChump

Date Reviewed: May 9, 2012

Strengths:    Fast! I mean FAST!!!!

Weaknesses:    Weak, Seriously weak!

Bottom Line:

These tires are the fastest tires I have ever ridden in 12 years of experimenting with the latest and greatest racing tires. That said, I am done racing on them. The side walls are irresponsibility thin. I have had two sidewall flats in three races (running tubeless with stans). The courses were as no-nothing as you can get, pretty shocking where and when the punctures occurred. Setup took several hours and much patience to get the sidewalls sealed as they have many holes right out of the box. Do yourself a favor and get a better made tire... I'm going back to Conti Race Kings.

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Submitted by TIM G a Cross Country Rider from U.K

Date Reviewed: December 29, 2011

Strengths:    Fast light inflates easily on tube less.AWESOME very quick with good grip for so little tread. The Schwalbe catalogue description say's it all about these tyres"If your technical riding skills are good these tyres are for you" however if you fanny about blaming your tyres for every mistake you make steer clear of them. I use them for X.C racing and Cyclo Cross on my mountain bike and they are mega.

Weaknesses:    For me none

Bottom Line:

Great race tyre in dry weather for a confident rider

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Favorite Trail:   AREA 51

Duration Product Used:   1 Year

Price Paid:    $45.00

Purchased At:   Stourport cycles

Similar Products Used:   Specialized Baldy,Michelin JeT x.c,Schwalbe Huricane,Ritchey Z semi slick,Schwalbe old blue full slick tyre.

Bike Setup:   FRM HP10,D.T Swiss full carbon fork, Stans Olympic wheels,F.S.A 2X9 crank

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Submitted by roxtar a Cross Country Rider from Crown Point, IN USA

Date Reviewed: August 22, 2011

Strengths:    Light and fast
Surprising grip
Surprising strength
True 2.4

Weaknesses:    Wet and nasty.
Also hard loose gravelly stuff (although what does work on that crap?)
True 2.4 (Very tight fit in rear frame. Switching to 2.25 in rear)
Like all Schwalbes; pricy and hard to find discounted.

Bottom Line:

Incredible tires. Schwalbe hit a grand slam with this one.

I ran these in 2.4" at Leadville this year. I was a little concerned with Leadville's sharp rocks on these thin, lightweight sidewalls.
Nothing to worry about. They held up amazing. I hit every rocky downhill section as fast as possible (I'm a DH guy and had to make up time lost on the climbs. No time for picking through the rocks, just point it, hammer, and fly) and they held solid as a rock. After the race they still looked good as new. No noticeable wear at all.
Leadville's tiny ball bearing-ish gravel road corners were scary but I don't know any tire that would grip in those.

As expected, they're extremely fast.
What's unexpected is how much grip they have. In dirt (especially soft dirt) you can roll them on their side in corners with complete confidence. The shoulder lugs grip way better than I'd hoped for. They ARE my XC race tire of choice for anything but complete slimy conditions.
I run them harder than most; around 30-35psi and they work well this way (I'm 175lbs) but I prefer a solid feeling tire in corners.

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Favorite Trail:   Loma (Fruita)

Duration Product Used:   3 months

Price Paid:    $45.00

Similar Products Used:   I'm a tire junky. Tried them all from super lite skinny race tires to DH

Bike Setup:   I run these on my XC race bike; Gary Fisher HiFi Pro with Hadley/NoTubes Olympic wheelset running Stans.

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Submitted by COLINx86 a Racer from Fort Worth, Texas

Date Reviewed: December 29, 2010

Strengths:    LIGHT!, rolls good

Weaknesses:    Not a very strong tire, not the best cornering grip.

Bottom Line:

Great racing tire if the course is tacky or if you have incredible bike handling skills.

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Favorite Trail:   Big Cedar

Duration Product Used:   3 months

Similar Products Used:   Maxxis Aspen, Maxxis Crossmark, Maxxis Larsen

Bike Setup:   Sette Phantom, Stans olympic wheels, fox fork, XTR

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Submitted by gonzo1034 a Cross Country Rider

Date Reviewed: April 22, 2010

Strengths:    Super fast rolling and low weight.

Weaknesses:    Unable to set-up tubeless with stans.

Bottom Line:

I selected this tire for its fast tread and low weight. I was hoping to set it up tubeless but was unable to pop in the beads. Took it to a bike shop and they were not able to mount either. I don’t know how hard they tried. I was forced to use tubes.

Did a 64 mile race and thought for sure I would get a flat, I was wrong. They performed flawlessly. Just as they describe, they are FAST!! I was able to maintain a higher speed with less effort. They are a little skidish and two wheel drift are common. You must remain focus on the turns and utilize proper cornering technique.

On steep climbs you must remain seated or the rear will start to spin. If set up tubeless and lower air pressure that would help with better traction. On deep sand they were wondering, again lower air pressure would help with floatation. Over all this tires performed beyond my expectations. I'm saving these tires for race day only.

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Duration Product Used:   Less than 1 month

Price Paid:    $65.00

Purchased At:   Bike Bling

Similar Products Used:   Kenda SB8

Bike Setup:   Ibis Mojo SL xtr everything and Mavic 819 ust on chris king hubs.

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Submitted by cabbgage a Racer from spain

Date Reviewed: July 20, 2008

Strengths:    light, fast, predictable grip

Weaknesses:    not as grippy as other tyres on loose stuff, forget them in the wet, wear out fast

Bottom Line:

great racing tyre, i bought the tubeless version...no problems fitting or with punctures, back tyres is about half worn out after only 10 hours, so they are expensive to run. Grip here in dry hard pack spain is good, they move about a lot but is predictable and fun. If you ride mud i'd forget them, but for a dry sunny race..go for them and leave the others behind!...really fast!

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Duration Product Used:   Less than 1 month

Price Paid:    $65.00

Purchased At:   bikedock.com

Similar Products Used:   bald old tyres

Bike Setup:   ktm team elite

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Submitted by Redfish_NL a Weekend Warrior from Netherlands

Date Reviewed: July 5, 2008

Strengths:    -Low weight
-nice grip
-fast!

Weaknesses:    -expensive
-no puncture protection
-hard to keep sealed with notubes

Bottom Line:

These tires are very light, unfortunately on my scale they were 305g and 327g instead of the claimed 295g.

They run nice, it's clear that it takes me less effort to sustain the same speed as other bikers with bigger tires.

I have had constant problems with notubes and these tires. They will seal quickly, but if you increase the pressure new small holes form on the sidewalls. These will also seal, but not on the trails, you have to hold the tire horizontally so the latex will touch the holes. Once you got it sealed, it works, but I've probably had 30 small holes already in my rear tire and had to repressurize the tire around 10 times in 10 days. Front tire is better and holds air pretty well. I do hope they will seal permanently so I can start driving my bike instead of pumping up my tires and wiggling the bike once every while to seal the small holes.

I also had a crack on the bottom of the tire after 5 miles, it was too big to seal with the latex, so I lost all latex as it gushed out and had to fix the tire manually. Big mess.

So far I've been very happy with these tires while I was riding my bike, they are really fast and have enough grip for XC. At home I have not been very happy with them. I spent more time fixing my tires than riding my bike and that's not why I bought these tires.

They are expensive, and they won't last very long so I think eventually I will think of them as too expensive in the long run if I have to buy new ones 3 times a year. Time will tell.

2 Chillis for value, as they cost the same as Racing ralphs/Nobby Nics etc, but will last less than half the mileage.

2 Chillis for overall rating. I do like them but so far they have been too much of a hassle to give them a 'good' rating.

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Duration Product Used:   Less than 1 month

Price Paid:    $65.00

Similar Products Used:   Racing Ralph, Michelin XC

Bike Setup:   Hardtail 6 speed :)

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Submitted by John a Cross Country Rider from Barrie Ontario Canada

Date Reviewed: May 25, 2008

Strengths:    Lite, fast and Actually quite grippy. They convert to tubeless quite easily with Stan's sealant.

Weaknesses:    Not as wide as claimed

Bottom Line:

Thees tires are grate I was surprised by how grippy they are. They took 4 minutes off my lap time and shaved almost a pound off my bike. I have them converted with Stan's on Cross max wheels and the sealed up with little effort. They are perfect for dry hard pack and trails with a little loose loamy soil over hard pack. They good on roots and rocks as long as they are reasonably dry. For their intended purpose they are tough to beat. They loose one hot chili for being narrower than claimed. The 2.0 is actually 1.78.

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Duration Product Used:   Less than 1 month

Purchased At:   The Shop where I work (Bike Zone)

Similar Products Used:   Roll X, Pythons, Nevegals, NBX lite And lot of others.

Bike Setup:   Ellsworth Epiphany

Reviews 1 - 9 (9 Reviews Total)

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Schwalbe Furious Fred Tire

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