Vegan Tires

[roper]

Great thread!!!!
very helpful too

[tellygonebung]

I had no idea! Is it in the tyres or the moulding process? ....My 3 bikes have Conti and Schwalbe tyres on! ....

Bugger.

[kallefs]

My bikes have Conti and Schwalbe tyres on! ....

Bugger.

Same here...

[fredrikw]

Yep, Schwalbe and Conti tires on all my wheels... But I just ordered a pair of Maxxis Ikons, keeping my fingers crossed they'll be a good replacement for my bastard Schwalbe Rocket Rons... Replacing the whole tire park will be a slow process though.

[bob_summers]

I agree with Fred, this info needs to be on page one of a thread.
Nes' table is great, but if one googles vegan+tires, this is the first hit. I don't know if google spreadsheets show up in the search results.

If we lock this, what happens to the google results? Do we start again from the bottom?

I'm happy to start and manage the new thread btw.

[Herbsman]

Thanks for getting in touch, I am afraid our tyres are not vegan friendly so to speak as indeed animal products are used in the production of a Schwalbe tyre.

Regards,

Will Brown
Schwalbe UK

BOOOO!

(Herbsman, how much £ did you put on that??!!)

£0.01

[xrodolfox]

Great thread.
I need to buy myself a pair of tubular for a new pair of race wheels, and this helps a lot.
I need info on a starting pair of tubulars... like Tufo. I'm concerned about the glues.

[Mr. Cleetus]

Since I assume this is for you TT/Tri bike, you want to put a set of fast tires on your race wheels, so there is no need to check out the tufos (they test as very slow tires). There are a number of considerations such as how well the width matches the width of your rim, rolling resistance, etc. For rolling resistance, it can be pretty hard to beat the Vittoria Evo Corsa CXs although with their increase in TPI a couple of years ago they actually seemed to have increased in rolling resistance. Unfortunately it seems as if Vittoria is still an unknown on the vegan tire list (and these are expensive tires) - but there are a number of other good tires out there (I will need to remind myself and get back to you or give you a link). People tend to dismiss rolling resistance, but when you look at the watts that are in it, it can be significant for a bad tire.

Glues is a pretty damn good question and I suspect it may be impossible to find a vegan one, but I honestly have no idea. I have been blissfully ignorant and ignored it in the past.

Great thread.
I need to buy myself a pair of tubular for a new pair of race wheels, and this helps a lot.
I need info on a starting pair of tubulars... like Tufo. I'm concerned about the glues.

[xrodolfox]

After more research I'm most interested in the Zipp Tangante. They are relatively affordable, and made by Vitorria. On the last list, I thought Vitorria came up vegan. Eh? I will call Zipp directly tomorrow. Would tubular tape more likely be vegan?

[bob_summers]

Nice one, Rodolfo!

And there's a vegan tub glue thread on here somewhere, maybe update that too if you get an answer from Zipp. Good luck!

I can only speculate, but I am under the impression that tub glue is a rubber solution suspended in some kind of ether than evaporates off (rather than rendered-down animal bones). So I guess the vegan aspect depends on whether the rubber uses the same stuff we have problems with in the tyres (I forget what it's called!)

GLue for track tubs uses shellac (doesn't need to resist heat from braking), but I haven't seen that sold for years.

[Konstantinos]

I received the following reply from Bontrager but the "To my knowledge" and "I am confident.." parts make me feel unsure.

[delusional]

I contacted WTB after seeing their new Vigilante tyre and they were really helpful - it took them a few weeks to find out for me, but they made sure to get back to me with the following:

Hello Dan!

What we've been able to find is that the stearic acid used in our tires is from vegetable sources.

Good news!

[kallefs]

Nice!

[like_to_bike]

Just to summarize the information in this thread, and the previous one on the same subject, we have the following results...

Free of animal products:
------------------------

DMR
Kenda
Maxxis
Michelin
NoTubes
Panaracer
Specialized
Vittoria
Vredestein
WTB
Zipp Tangante

Contain animal products:
------------------------

Continental
Dunlop
Goodyear
Pirelli
Schwalbe

[patxi]

Hi, I recently discovered this forum by this thread (it was linked on some vegan article), and before giving up on Continentals I decided to write them again, since the original info was some years old. They took their time (2 weeks) but they just gave me a 'vegan' answer:

Christian Wurmbaeck Christian.Wurmbaeck@conti.de
5:02 PM (6 hours ago)
to me

Hi Patxi,

our stearin is not from animal origin, it's only from vegetable raw
materials.

________________________________

Mit freundlichen Grüßen - Kind regards

Christian Wurmbäck

Head of Productmanagement Bicycle Tires
Productmanager Race & Tubular
Continental - Division RU-PLT