Giant P-R3 Tyre

Reviewed by Martin Childs

Front weight 285g, £20

Rear weight 287g, £20

A solid performer, decent enough quality for a stock tyre.

These tyres originally came from Ali's 2012 Giant Defy 1. The bike arrived with a slow puncture which eventually gave way a couple of rides into ownership.

I had bought some retro clincher wheels (Campagnolo Mexico '68 rims on Veloce hubs) to replace my very fashionable at the time but not very practical in the real world tubular wheels (Mavic CXP 30 rims on Veloce hubs) wheels for my trusty 853 steed along with some heavily discounted blue coloured Vittoria Rubino Pro rubber. It turned out that the blue shade was slightly different in real life compared to pictures on the internet and I was not particularly pleased with the match to my frame. It was at this point Alison jumped in to relieve me of them as they looked great on her bike and in the process of fixing the aforementioned puncture that she decided the bead was far too tight for her liking on the basis that if she got a puncture during a triathlon it'd take way too much time to repair.

In use the tyres were good, not overly slow (obviously opinion only as I've no way of testing this!), never lacking of grip and not one puncture during my ownership. There was one occasion when I was really pushing their limits - it was on a descent from the Cat & Fiddle, the roads were damp and there was a 25mph crosswind. It was a couple of the sharp hairpin type corners, as I was turning towards the apex at speed where the crosswinds struck - so strong that I quickly ran out of grip and was literally being blown across the road. The tyres performed admirably and I was able to hold and control the two wheel drift. So much fun in fact that I repeated the stunt a couple of times along the way!

In terms of mileage they were doing well until one day travelling along cycle route 60 I was dismayed to find out they'd freshly chip'n'sealed the whole damned thing. This made progress very slow and on my return I'd noticed that they'd suddenly almost reached their wear indicators on the rear. So less than 2,500km to reach max wear then switched front/back and I got another 700km before a side-wall tear (the inner tube was poking through but not punctured 4mm rip) ended the front. I must admit though the mountain biker in me means I do like to take them off road through some rough stuff. I didn't really notice any difference between the rubber compound on the front and rears despite what the specs say. Other than the tear there was only a couple minor nicks in rubber.

You'd hope to get more distance out of them really

Rating: 3 out of 5