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Clement MSO 36mm Tubeless Tires: At The Finish
The last update on these much anticipated MSO 36mm tires was in December. You can check that out here. Then Winter came knocking and I went off fat biking for a while….. Sorry! I happen to like other forms and styles of cycling as well, plus, the gravel roads, which were coated in snow and ice, really weren’t going to allow the remainder of this review to be representative of how this tire would normally be used. Well, now with that all out of the way, I can say that gravel riding has come back with a vengeance, so here now is my final verdict on these first ever tubeless ready Clement gravel road tires.
At The Finish: You can go back to read the previous post by hitting the link in the paragraph above, but I am just going to cut to the chase here. This tire hits many of the points one would want in a gravel road tire. It is reasonably light, rolls very fast, does tubeless really well on a couple of different rims, at least, and rides really, really nicely.
There is just one tiny complaint- they tend to lose lateral grip in deeper, loose gravel. Really, that is about my only complaint. Otherwise these tires are fast, supple, and smooth out the chatter really well for a tire this size.
Oh…..and speaking of size. The Clement MSO tubeless tire is rated at 36mm although it has measured 38mm ever since having stretched out a tad on the HED Ardennes+ wheels. There have been some questions from some riders as to why this tire wasn’t a 40mm tire, like its predecessor, but again- The feedback which was given to Clement from myself and by other racers was that by going a bit narrower, there would be weight savings without much downside on the ride and performance aspects that the 40mm version has. This has turned out to have been exactly the case with the MSO 36mm tires, as far as I am concerned. They are lighter, faster, and they do everything else just as well as the bigger 40’s do with tubes in them.
Other tubeless gravel road tires we’ve tried so far haven’t been significantly nicer than these, or as in some cases, anywhere near as good. The Clements are easy to set up tubeless also. The bar has been set pretty high here. I might choose the WTB Nano 40 TCS tires for stability in deeper, loose gravel over these, but that’s about the only place I feel any other tire outshines the MSO 36mm tire significantly. There are a lot of tires in the pipeline that we will be seeing in the future, but for now, you’d be hard pressed to find a tire that is as fast with this sort of volume, and one that rides any better than the Clement MSO 36mm tire does.
Note: Clement Pneumatics sent over these MSO 36 mm tires to RidingGravel.com at no charge for test and review. We are not being bribed nor paid for this review and we will strive to give our honest thoughts and opinions throughout
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