Panaracer Col de la Vie for Raleigh Sports

I was under the weather a bit today, so only put in a couple of hours today. I've been gradually upgrading my 1974 Raleigh Sports 3 speed. I previously switched to a retro LED headlamp for my Dynohub set.

Today I changed the somewhat petrified Kenda K40 tires that I put on in 2003. I decided to upgrade to Col de la Vie Panaracer tires. These tires have skin-type soft walls rather than colored rubber. They are much larger and barely fit within the fenders, but do fit OK.

They run a bit slower than the Kendas, but they are much better at handling bumps, and have more an "all arounder" tread than a street tread. They do equally well on dirt, gravel, and pavement.

















Now we turn to the old tires. Both are somewhat petrified. But the darker tire on the right was the rear and exposed to oil over the 13 years. Look at the difference. Remember that excess oil from the Sturmey hub will head toward the rim and tire. Over the course of years it can be quite hard on the tire.

 The tire at right is the rear tire. It's plainly darker from 13 years of intermittent oil exposure. This is even despite occasional renewal of the grease seals in the hub. Keep those seals fresh and keep tire clean.

Even the front tire is petrified to a degree. Rubber chipped off like dust when I took it off the rim. This one was not exposed to oil.