Fake Challenge Paris Roubaix tires?

[KJMUNC]

Just had a Challenge Paris Roubaix split at the sidewall and ordered a replacement on ebay.

The tire that showed up looks and feels significantly different than the tire I'm replacing:

- The labels are the first difference: previous version has large sidewall labels, ebay tire has very small labels (see pics - top is ebay pic, which matches my old tire, bottom pic is what I got).
- The older tire has a red strip down the inside of the tire, which appears to be an anti-puncture protection strip. The ebay version has no internal layer/strip.

Has anyone else experienced this? I rode it 30mi this weekend without any issues but curious to know if Challenge changed the template for their Paris Roubaix tires or if I wound up with a fake.

[batman1425]

Quick search shows examples of the paris-roubaix with the smaller label from a few different review sites. I can't speak to the internal differences, but it seems the label differences you are seeing are consistent with other examples out in the wild that were likely sourced from dealers or direct.

[KJMUNC]

ah....just realized that on the Challenge site they also offer vulcanized tires in 120TPI vs. 300TPI in the handmade.....the smaller font tire appears to be the vulcanized version.

It was only $35 so I don't expect much, but good to know!

[jtbadge]

The vulcanized Challenge clinchers are probably much less prone to catastrophic failure.

[R3awak3n]

Originally Posted by jtbadge

The vulcanized Challenge clinchers are probably much less prone to catastrophic failure.

if you can mount em properly.

those were the ones I could not get to pop into the bead properly no matter what I tried to do.