![]() ![]() The takeaway is that if 48mm is cutting it close on your bike for a 650B tire, this may not be a great choice for that bike. Not quite 51, but considering that the tires are listed as 48.62mm (equivalent of 1.90″ which is what the sidewall says) that’s about 2mm of clearance taken up by tire stretch here. If you don't want the military green shown here, or the nile blue (both colours available with black or brown sidewalls), then standard black ones are available too.One more note- That stretching width seems to have finally stabilized at close to 51mm overall. As such, they've become my new favourite all-winter tyre. Unlike the G-Ones they're not 60 quid an end, but a much more reasonable £39.99, and lighter to boot. Like the Schwalbes, these GravelKings are right in the sweet spot of offering great grip and comfort while sacrificing barely any speed. My benchmark here is the Schwalbe G-One Speed, a tyre I've put thousands of kilometres into. They feel like road tyres, and they're not measurably slower (in a non-scientific, Strava average speeds kind of a way) than a 25mm or 28mm road tyre, especially when you start throwing in gravelly, potholed back lanes where you have to be much less careful about your line on a bigger tyre. > Buyer's Guide: 16 of the best gravel and adventure tyresĪs they're lightweight tubeless tyres, you'd expect the GravelKings to roll well, and they do. They're not aggressive enough for slippery surfaces – the wet chalk of Salisbury Plain, for example – either, but Panaracer does a chunkier GravelKing SK if that kind of thing is your bag. On unsurfaced trails they work well too, although they reach their limits once the surface goes beyond fine gravel and into your middling aggregates. It's the same story on the way back down: okay, you can lock up an unweighted rear tyre braking on a steep drop, but at the front the GravelKings never felt anything other than absolutely locked on. Stomping up the steep, greasy back road climbs around the South West in the wet months (that's all of them) is a recipe for getting some back wheel spin and a painful knee/stem interface, but I could barely get the GravelKings to budge. The ZSG natural compound file tread pattern gives excellent grip across a wide range of surfaces. The same tyre in a 650x48 size might be great for off-road shenanigans, but the 700x32 is better on the mixed road surfaces we get in the UK, with the occasional foray onto better-surfaced gravel routes. 'GravelKing' is a bit of a misnomer in this 32mm size. The bead-to-bead anti-flat casing seems to be doing its job. Puncture resistance is hard to measure empirically, but I've suffered no flats in about 500km of riding, mostly on lanes and plenty deliberately through the hedge trimmings. ![]() I stuck about 40ml of sealant in each tyre and they've stayed up really well: it's always worth checking the pressure before you head out, but they've held pressure better than most I've tried, without being bulky. At only 290g each end they're 35g less than Schwalbe's excellent G-One Speed in its 30mm incarnation (previously called the S-One, 'the Special One'), and swapping out 650 dynamo wheels with 40mm G-One Speed tyres for the same wheels in 700C with these GravelKings saved about 200g. ![]() Panaracer rates the tyres at a maximum of 60psi when running tubeless, and that felt about right for me for general road riding: enough give for extra comfort without sacrificing any speed.Īnd these are quick tyres for a 32mm. Setting these tyres up tubeless was simple enough: both went up first time on Hunt carbon rims with a bit of soapy water and and Airshot. The extra air in the carcass over a standard road width means there's comfort on tap for filthy back lanes and unsurfaced sections. Okay, they don't have the Open Pave's supple 320TPI casing, but the AX-Alpha Cord construction is still supple and you can run them tubeless which makes them even more so. And that's a fair comparison a lot of the time. You might think these tyres look a bit like a plus-sized version of Vittoria's Open Pave with their file tread and green bits. Pros: Easy to set up, roll well, good grip, good value.Are they gravel tyres? Not really for the UK, in this size. Also, they come in a range of natty colours. They're pretty light for a 32mm tyre, they're easy to set up tubeless and they roll really well. These 32mm Panaracer GravelKing tyres are excellent all-winter rubber for your road bike and my new favourite all-purpose winter tyre. ![]()
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