Guide to Continental Winter Cycle Tyres

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It’s that time of the year when the roads are hard on tyres and Continental have some especially suited to preventing punctures

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Guide to Continental Winter Cycle Tyres

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Just like with your clothing, your bike tyres could do with an extra layer or two during the colder months. Continental make some road tyres which are suited to the time of year when there’s more debris washed onto the roads due to the extra rain and also where the freeze/thaw process has left some roads in poor condition.

Continental offer a material called Duraskin on some of their most popular tyres; namely the Gatorskin, Gator Hardshell and GP4Season ranges. This is a wrap around fabric, ultralight yet ultra tough and applied externally to the casing to sheild from scuffs, cuts and tears from road debris, which appeals to winter cyclists. Duraskin is applied across the entire tyre casing cross section, from bead to bead.

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Gatorskin | Gator Hardshell | GP 4Season

Vectran

Vectran works differently from Duraskin. It’s job is to stop foreign objects from penetrating the tyre casing underneath the ‘running strip’ of the tread, which is the area in contact with the road. The GP4Season tyre uses two layers of this material, to give five casing layers beneath the tread, plus the additional Duraskin layer, making it our most protective road tyre.

Vectran is a synthetic material, created using a lengthy production process to produce a material that is has tremendous tear resistance at a very low weight. Coupled with the fact that it is very flexible, this makes it ideal as an anti-puncture material for Continental bicycle tyres.

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GP 4Season 

Poly-X

Poly-X is a cross weave nylon based fabric who’s job is to stop sharp objects such as thorns & glass from piercing the tyre casing, underneath the tread. It does this very well and only loses out to the more expensive Vectran material in terms of weight.

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Gatorskin | Gator Hardshell | Grand Prix GT

Hardshell

Hardshell uses materials like Poly-X & Duraskin to the maximum benefit. The cross-woven Poly-X layer underneath the tread is wider than in our other tyres and covers deep into the shoulder tread area. The nylon tyre casing is also slightly different in that it provides a 3-ply (3 layer) sidewall as against the usual 2-ply in almost all of our other road tyres. Our Gator Hardshell is therefore a very effective winter tyre whilst our Grand Prix GT uses a base Hardshell casing construction (3-ply sidewall & wide Poly-X layer) yet provides BlackChili tread performance.

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Gator Hardshell

Nytech

Nytech is our newest anti-puncture technology which sits in our performance sector, below Poly-X and above the base Safety System. The Grand Sport Extra uses two NyTech layers under the tread and a 3-ply sidewall, as with our Hardshell models to provide great reliability at an affordable price.

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Grand Sport Extra
Just some of the Success riders have had on Continental

Nairo Quintana (Movistar): Giro d’Italia 2014 – 1st overall, Tour de France 2013 – 2nd overall / King of the Mountains – 1st / Under 23 Award – 1st,
Orica-GreenEdge: Stage win – Tour de France 2013 (Team Time Trial)
Simon Gerrans (Orica): Liege-Bastogne-Liege 2014 – 1st, Tour Down Under 2014 – 1st, Australian Road Championships 2014 – 1st. Stage wins – Tour de France 2013
Andre Griepel (Lotto-Belisol): German Road Championships 2014 – 1st, Stage wins – Tour de France 2013
Alejandro_Valverde (Movistar): Spanish TT Championships 2014 – 1st, Fleche Wallonne 2014 – 1st,
Rapha Condor JLT: Overall winners – Pearl Izumi Tour Series 2014, 2013, Tour of Korea overall (Mike Cummings) 2013 & 2014 (Hugh Carthy)
Tom Moses (Rapha Condor JLT): CiCle Classic 2014 – 1st
Alex Dowsett (Movistar): British National Record – 10 mile Time trial – 17minutes 20 seconds (2014), Commonwealth Games Gold Medal – Time Trial 2014, Stage Winner – Tour of Britain 2014
Ryan Mullen (AnPost-CRC): Irish National Road Race Champion 2014, Irish National Time Trial Champion 2014
Mark McNally (AnPost CRC): King of the Mountain winner – Tour of Britain 2014 – See more at:

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