Just when you thought (or perhaps hoped) that 29 plus might be fading into history, QBP’s newest tire brand, Teravail has come out with the 29+ Coronado. Our pair of test tires is the Teravail Coronado 29 x 2.8 Light & Supple Tan Wall version. They also come in black sidewalls if you happen to have a stable full of black bikes or like to pretend that you’re one of the founding members of a bicycle gang called the Bike Black Ribbon Society. We published a review of the 26 x 4.0 version of the Coronado tread pattern and the results were quite positive in nature. I have to admit that when I first laid eyes on the Coronado tread pattern, it reminded me of an ancient Tioga Farmer John mountain bike tread pattern from back in the late 1980’s….and I thought that they would suck. I’ve taken dozens of blows to the head over the years and that must have somewhat scrambled my memory of what a Tioga Farmer John looked like because the Coronado tread pattern rides nothing like a tractor tire. I guess you can’t judge a plus bike tire by its cover. The cat that reviewed the 26 x 4.0 for us loved them and in his review said: “I can say with confidence that these are the best gravel tires I’ve ever used on my fat-bike, and when I finish wearing out my test pair I will definitely be purchasing another set.” That’s some pretty high praise and since I live on a 52-mile gravel trail and oft times ride a 29+ Surly Krampus on said gravel I decided to give these tires a whirl.
Let’s start out with some measurements. Laid out flat the Coronados measured 175mm bead to bead and 79.36mm tread to tread. Mounted on 50mm wide Surly Rabbithole rims at 20 psi the Coronados measured 68.42mm wide at the casing and 68.99mm for the tread. The shoulder knobs on the Coronado (the ones that look like a Shiba Inu) are 4.84mm tall with center knobs that are 2.89mm. The knobs between the shoulder and the center knobs are 3mm tall. For the longest time, I had been running a Panaracer Fat-B-Nimble 29 x 3.0 on the front and a generic Gravity Vidar that was a $38 tire on the rear of this (heavy metal) Krampus. The 2.8 Coronados looked to be the exact same size as the undersized Fat-B-Nimble. Plenty of tire for the kind of riding that I’ll do with them.
When it came time to weigh the two tires that QBP sent us I discovered that one of the tires was 887g and one was 974g. I pinged Teravail to see if they thought that a 10% weight discrepancy was normal and they said that we probably received one of the set-up tires that was run before the factory in Taiwan had the fill rates dialed. I really had hoped that the 887g tire was the normal weight, but it turned out that three other production tires that Teravail weighed for us ran 986/953/968g.
photos from QBP
I’ve probably put 50-60 miles on our pair of Coronados and they roll very easy and fast on the local gravel. I think that I’m going to enjoy riding this pair of mixed terrain plus tires from now until the snow flies. We’ll probably be back with a full review of this set of sneakers. Then again, we might write a power ballad inspired by the rock stylings of Michigan native, Bob Seger about them…only time will tell.
More Info – http://teravail.com/tires/coronado#TR7296
Finally, someone actually came out with a decent 29×2.8in Trail tire. I mounted up a set of Durable Coronado’s (~1010gm weighed at the shop) on my full-suspension 29+ Trek Full Stache with i35mm (i=inner width) rims and I’ve already got about 100 miles on them. It’s like my Full Stache has been turbocharged. In fact, I might never buy another 29×3.0 tire again. I’m going to go even further and say that any tire wider than 2.8 and any rim wider than i35 should be sent to the graveyard of outdated tech. 2.8-i35 performs better than wider rims and tires. It has less weight and rolling resistance while still retaining all the Plus magic—traction, flotation, and tire suspension. So far, I give this tire a big thumbs up. This is a tire that 29+ riders are going to like!
Want !!