Yes, I rode some singletrack on the Nanos on each of the last 2 rides, while my partner is still on the SKs (we are awaiting delivery of a 2nd pair of Nanos).
There was a noticeable improvement in traction and I was goosing it on a number of sections and stuffing it into corners where she simply couldn't keep up for fear of sliding out. These trails are quite smooth, with pine needles over dirt. We've had rain recently, so traction is currently pretty good... when its much drier, everything is slipperier (pine needles turn into roller bearings).
I've also gotten up some short steep climbs (which is sorta my my 'thing') which were extremely difficult or not possible with the SKs.
My $.02: There is no industry standard for measuring tire width. The actual tire width depends on the width of the wheel rim, pressure, and the construction and material of the tire carcass and tread. There was a good discussion of this problem in Lennard Zinn's Velonews tech. section awhile back. One suggestion, that seems to make sense, was that manufacturers should publish the actual bead to bead width of the tire rather than the non-standard approximate "width" of the inflated tire. This would at least give a common well defined measurement, that might be useful to consumers in comparing one tire to another. Of course, the actual installed width of the tire would still depend on rim width, and tire pressure.
JWB475 wrote:Panaracer updated all of their tires sizes a year or two ago to actually be true to size. I have the 650B x 48 SK's and 700C x 38 Non-SK's both are on 21mm ID rims and measure out to their namesakes...
So unless you are getting new old stock tires, you should be good to go...
Indeed, they are bigger by about 2 mm. And, of course, it's relative to the rim size you mount them on. I just mounted some non-SK 35s and to my amazement they measure almost 38 (37.8 at 40 psi) on a 21.5 internal rim. This is an issue for me because I only have enough room for actual 35's to still have any mud clearance left over. With these actually measuring almost 38 they are running really close to the inside of the fork leg on my Domane Disc. Kinda bummed about that. Love the tires though! I have them on another bike. Fast, and hold up WAAAY better than their Compass counter part.
