Schwalbe Thunder Burt Tires

The Thunder Burts are what your uncle comes down with after eating too much carnival food. Somehow, Schwalbe caught wind of that (ha!) and decided to turn his gastrointestinal distress into a tire that’s pretty wicked cool. Those crafty Germans. Always subverting the paradigm in such a weird, unsettling way.

Like many contemporary tires, the Thunder Burts are best set up tubeless. That’s because the casing is pretty thin. Thin casings save weight, make the tire more ‘supple’ aka soft, and that in turn helps improve grip, and keep rolling resistance down. Thin casing tires, as long as the casing isn’t made out of airmail stationary, are usually ok for all but really rough stuff, like class 4 roads, rock gardens, or trips to Uncle Burt’s house.

Grab a Thunder Burt if you have a bike that needs a tire that rolls fastish on the Pavement, is quick on dirt and gravel roads, and has enough bite to ride at a chill pace on dry trails. A think of it as a good big volume gravel tire that has more traction than say, a WTB Byway. Not a great all around bike packing tire, as it doesn’t have enough traction for getting rad off road, or enough volume for rim protection at ultra low pressures off road or enough sidewall protection.  But good for most applications, and feels fast and 'fun', if a piece of rubber can feel fun.

Schwalbe calls this tire 'tubeless easy'. In our experience, you actually need to put a tube in first, seat the tire, then take the tube out, keeping one bead of the tire seated. Then convert to tubeless. Doing this 2 minute extra step will make seating these tires easy. If you skip it, you will be cursing your Uncle Burt, amongst other things.