Tires

[ReverendNewman]

K, follow me on this.
I have my 29er with tubeless Schwabble Big One's on it. I use this for just riding up and down the Spring Lake/Belmar/Asbury strip.

Now these tires are pretty fat, albeit very small lugs. For less rolling resistance, should I switch to a thinner, "tubed" tire.? Or would a tube actually be more weight and offset the thinner tire choice.

I.e. which would give me less rolling resistance?

Schwabble seems like the only company offering a semi slick tubeless 29er tire.

 

[Karate Monkey]

Smaller contact patch tires are always going to feel like they are faster, in big part because they are lighter, unless you have some real pigs of tires.

FWIW, the knobs on the standard Big Ones are not that pronounced, but they make a lighter casing version (this year, it's called the G-One Speed, with lightskin casing) meant for racing on sand. The knobs are virtually non-existent, ditto for the tread, and it seeps more than a tubeless-ready casing, but there you have it. Lighter tires go a long way towards improving the feeling of 'faster'.

You will probably be disappointed, unless you also accept that even putting on something like extralight Snoqualmie Pass tires would only net you maybe 1-1.5MPH increase in cruising speed.

 

[Supermoto]

I have a set of the Big Ones lite skins, they are very fast tires. They just roll forever. I haven't had any issues running them tubeless, I no longer have a bike to put them on, so if you are interested in them, let me know