Michelin Pilot City -any good?

[Brucey]

I recently bought a used bike with these tyres fitted.

They claim to have 'protek max' puncture protection in them. They have a reflective stripe on the sidewall, and seem to be built on a tough-looking carcass with a reasonably high tpi count. The tyres in question have not bee used much but are clearly several years old and there is no sign of cracking in the sidewall. If these were schwalbes, I think that they would be falling apart by now, used or not.

They have a thick layer of something which makes the tread almost as thick and unyielding as a M+ tyre.

Anyone else used these? Are they any good? Are they discontinued now?

I've not ridden them yet (bike is a do-er-upper for sure....) and I'm not expecting them to ride especially well, but how do others find them?

cheers

[jakevoelcker]

I have these on my commuting bike. They do seem very puncture-resistant (3 years of approx 3 mile daily commute plus evening and weekend use around town, and not a single puncture yet... I've probably just jinxed it!). As you've said, no cracking or anything yet, and I don't even keep them as pumped up as I should.

I find them slightly slippery in the wet. At first I thought it was just because they were new and shiny, but they are still the same now. I've never actually slid really badly on them, but I can hear them squealing slightly when cornering on wet roads.

I don't think their rolling resistance is the best, but then the bike I have them on is a monstrously heavy Dutch-style thing with hub gears so it wouldn't feel speedy even with very fast tyres fitted.

I believe the Michelin City tyres are still manufactured, but no longer imported into the UK. I was told by Raleigh UK (who used to distribute them) that availability and manufacturing lead times had got so bad that they weren't going to bother with them any more.

[blackbike]

I used them for years because they were cheap and often available at those one day sales which used to tour the UK. They were puncture resistant and long lasting, a bit like a lighter version of a Schwalbe Marathon.

[keyboardmonkey]

Soon after I bought the bike I quickly replaced the twice-punctured Maxxis Larsen tyres on my MTB with a pair of Michelin PiLOT CiTY PROTEK MAX 26 x 1.75 tyres in the summer of 2009. The MTB is my commuter and has done approximately 6 miles a day most working days for around 40 weeks a year over five years.

I haven't had a single puncture, but once hit a tack or something and felt the bike bob up and down when the thing stuck into the tyre. I pulled out the tack or whatever and all was well. That was a couple of years ago.

Longest ride was coming home from Masham in North Yorkshire to East Yorkshire. Not especially comfortable - and certainly not quick - over 80 miles.

The tyres are not at all supple and I've fallen off when I wandered off the tarmac surface at the edge of the road and tried to get back on the road but fell off when trying to rejoin the slightly raised surface. Another fall on a slightly icy surface. In both cases I had probably had too much air in the tyres.

I haven't tried to buy another pair - I haven't needed to. Highly recommended for fit and forget commuting.

[Brucey]

FWIW I've test ridden these tyres now and the kind of tread they have might as well not be there; the front tyre felt like it wanted to step out on wet, slick surfaces, moreso than my normal bikes/tyres would; it felt like a slick tyre in these conditions.

Mine are 700x30 sized and I think they roll very well (considering the puncture resistance) on good surfaces. Here the lack of tread probably helps.

But the truly remarkable thing is just how small changes in tyres and frame/fork construction affect the ride quality. My normal town bike has a springy steel frame and I use puncture resistant 700x35 tyres (actually 37mm wide on my rims) . Over cobbles the bike jiggles about a bit but nothing terrible at all. The bike with the Pilot tyres has an aluminium frame and fork which are both far stiffer, and combined with the narrower 30mm tyres the ride is truly appalling over the same kinds of bumpy surfaces.

Part of the blame for this is the frame and fork, partly the tyres I guess. My view is that there is no tyre pressure which would make the ride comfort acceptable to me on these surfaces with these tyres on this bike.

I actually think the tyres are pretty good, It is a shame that Raleigh ramped up the price of the things (they went from about £15 to about £25 a go over four or five years....) and appear to have now stopped importing/distributing them.

cheers