htrider wrote: ↑Sun Mar 14, 2021 4:53 pm
Bloody hell, more bling. Wish I'd never looked at this thread.
As I understood it, the snowshoe XXXXXXXXXXL's were only a bit wider than bud / lou but quite a bit taller. The german lad who tested the protoypes noted that they were more like 5.5" and only single ply sidewalls, hence the vids of him riding through knee deep fluffies running them at 0 psi. The production ones were just 5" and had beefier sidewalls so they wouldn't disintegrate on a rocky trail (his words). The cognoscenti on the mtbr fat bike forum reckoned the advantages of the bigger carcass on the proddy XXL were outweighed by the monster tread on bud an lou. So my comment above was wrong.
But bud n lou are the bestest
I've only compared the non-prototype XXL to some other tyres and it's quite a bit wider and especially, as you wrote, much, much taller. The tyre print when running very little pressure (as you would) is humongous and in a league of its own.
The tread depth of Bud/Lou was 7 mm on my set (got them probably end of 2015, or 14) and the depth on the XXL was 7 mm centre and 8 mm off centre and shoulders (when I checked in what must have been end of 2016).
I agree, for most of the days the Bud/Lou is the best (winter trips in the Alps).
When conditions are really soft, I deflate until hardly any air can be released (without applying pressure to compress the tyre), which means I'm running ambient pressure, only the sidewalls supporting.
It becomes funny when I descend from an Alpine pass, loose more than 1000 m vert and have a vacuum inside the tyres. I always get caught thinking I've got a puncture since the tyres become a square shape. On hard surfaces (eg crossing a road) I can feel how I'm riding on the rim.
Fatbiking (on soft snow) is probably the funniest and weirdest way to ride a bike...
