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Conti Speed Kings
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Product: Continental Speed King 2.3 tube-type wire bead mountain bike tires. Test Platform: 2006 Kona Dawg Primo. Product Put in Service: August 2007. Reviewed by: Rich Ries. Cost: $22.95 each; list is $40 to $45. Weight: 600 g. Actual Size: 2.22” across the casing; 2.23” across the knobs at the widest point. Recommended? Yes.
Executive Summary: Reliable dry-conditions performance from tires that live up to the “Speed” in their name.
Scroll down to the last picture for the demise of the Kings.
Ratings
(1 is lowest, 5 is highest)
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Comments
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Traction, all conditions
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4
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Sensitive to pressure; break early but recover well; no experience in wet conditions
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Ease of Installation
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3
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Requires a tire tool but not a gorilla
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Cost/Value
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4
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On sale; no bargain at list price
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Wear
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3
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High initial wear rate slowed after the first couple of rides
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The Continental Speed Kings live up to their name. I first noticed this as I crested a small rise on the trail at Versailles State Park. The bike accelerated much faster than it had with the OEM Nokkian NBT 2.3 tires. I also noticed it every time I stomped the pedals on my next outing, which was at Brown County State Park. The Contis didn't convert my Kona Dawg into a Yamaha YZ, but the increase in speed was immediately noticeable.
Part of this is due to the Kings' relatively low mass. The front NBT hit 660 grams, used, while the Kings were 600 grams new. This is especially impressive since the Kings are wire bead tires and the NBTs were folders. The Continental Web site accurately lists the wire 2.3” Kings at 600 grams. Three other models, a puncture-resistant Duraskin, a foldable, and an ultralight Supersonic, are shown as 610, 560, and 500 grams, respectively.
Part of the Kings' speed advantage is due to low rolling resistance. Rolling resistance is affected by many things, such as the durometer of the rubber, the type and number of threads in the casing, and the size of the tread blocks. I don't know the durometer of the Kings. Their thread count is 84, but Conti doesn't say what material is used for those threads. The Kings have small tread blocks. Those small blocks were part of the reason I bought the Speed Kings. The tread pattern reminded me of my favorite MTB tire of all time, the Michelin Comp S Lite. The Michelins had incredible traction in all conditions. It seemed I could have stood the bike upright against a wall and the tires would have held it there.
The Speed Kings don't have quite the same traction, but they're close. They break away sooner and more abruptly than the Michelins did, but the Kings recover very nicely. Traction was dramatically improved when I dropped the air pressure from the mid-30 psi range to 25 psi in the front and 27 psi in the back, which is where I usually ran the Nokkians. The Kings can be used front or rear but their rolling direction gets reversed depending on their position.
Early wear on the Speed Kings came in a great hurry. Fortunately the wear rate slowed and after a year they showed no more wear than they did after a month. I use them only in summer, so a year in this case isn't 12 months of riding, but it still amounted to several hundred miles of singletrack. To their credit, the Contis have withstood some nasty rocks with no sidewall damage. And despite operating pressures normally reserved for tubeless tires, I've had no pinch flats with the Contis. Because they're my summer tires I've not had an opportunity to ride them in wet conditions.
If you're looking for lightweight, all-mountain tires, the Speed Kings are a good choice.
Photos
The Speed Kings have small, widely-spaced knobs.
The Nokkian NBT tires (above, right) that came on the Kona had much larger knobs. Although the NBTs were only about 10 percent heavier than the Contis, they felt much more sluggish.
June 2009: After almost two years of seasonal use the rear Speed King suddenly let go of its wire bead. This is a particularly troubling failure mode; no type of boot will make this tire rideable again. Had I been on a remote trail I would have had a long walk in front of me. Fortunately I was near the end of the Shadow Run trail at Versailles State Park and it was a mostly downhill hike back to the BRATmobile. My confidence in the front dropped to zero when the rear blew its bead, so I scrapped them both and snatched the Conti Flow PROtections from my other dually and put my winter tires on that bike. I don't know how many miles were on the Kings but I can tell you there were quite a few and they were all hard miles. I'd rather retire a tire due to normal wear of the knobs than because of catastrophic failure, but the Kings were such sweet tires I would definitely consider another pair.