I use a Mavic Open Pro wheel with a PowerTap hub on my road bike. With Cross season starting I was hoping to switch the Open Pro to my cross bike. However Mavic’s website says the max tire size for the Open Pro is 28mm. Is there a descent 28mm tire I could get for my cross bike? Can I put a wider tire on the Open Pro without it rolling or causing issues?
You can run 32 or even 35mm cross tires on your Mavic rims no problem. I suspect their 28mm limit assumes road tires run at high pressures and they’re being conservative about blow off pressure with very large tires. I’ve definitely run full sized cross tires on Open Pro’s, Krysiums, Aksiums, and other relatively narrow road clincher rims.
BTW, power on the cross bike is awesome for training, especially for doing things like grass 2x20s, hot one laps, or standing start work. But during actual racing it’s almost worthless especially if the course is particularly technical or has a lot of running. I’m a big fan of measuring power during training and racing but cross racing is where I see the least value as even NP falls apart if you’re dealing with tight technical riding or a lot of running. It still can be interesting to see your NP for the race or your peak 5 or 30 second power or how often you break some high power like 700 watts during a race and it can help show how you paced lap by lap as it’s often easy to spot the lap patterns in the power/speed data but compared to road and TT racing it’s not nearly as useful during actual cross races.
-Dave
I’ve gone as big as 35mm with no problems. However, I’m mainly gravel roading it so I’m running 60-70 psi so no guarantees on not rolling the tire when you drop down to cross psi amounts.
Sweet! Thanks. I’m mostly changing it over for training. This time of year I’ll put almost all of my mileage on my cross bike so I still want to have power available for training purposes. I’m assuming racing cross with a power meter is like doing a crit. You’re lucky to have 3 seconds to actually look at your computer during the race but it’s fun to analyze the results.
No problems with the cross tires on Open Pros. I have been running at least a dozen different cross tires on a half dozen sets of Open Pros for the last 10-15 years and never had a problem ever with a cross tire and no fit. I have heard some of the tires don’t like Open Pros if you are trying to convert to tubeless. Never tried that.
I used 32s on my Mavic OP for my singlespeed during cross season last year. Never had any issues. Not doing it this year only because I prefer tubular.
Make sure to check around the eyelets every other race or so. Recent versions of the Open Pro seem a little brittle and can crack around the eyelets, good even spoke tension will help prevent this but the remounts during a race can be kind of rough (so I always check)
rich
I use a Mavic Open Pro wheel with a PowerTap hub on my road bike. With Cross season starting I was hoping to switch the Open Pro to my cross bike. However Mavic’s website says the max tire size for the Open Pro is 28mm. Is there a descent 28mm tire I could get for my cross bike? Can I put a wider tire on the Open Pro without it rolling or causing issues?
I dunno. I used Michelin Mud 2 (which I think is at least 32 mm) on Open pro. Seemed to work fine.