Review: 700 X 45mm Vulpine

 Note: WTB sent over one set each of the Vulpine S, Vulpine, and Resolute tires for testing and review to Guitar Ted Productions at no cost. I was not paid nor bribed for this review and I will always strive to give my honest thoughts and opinions throughout.

 I did a review of the three new WTB tires back in early July and now I want to break down the review into parts focusing on each tire in the release.This time I am going to focus on the Vulpine 700 X 45mm tires. Last week I updated the 700 X 40mm Resolute review. You can check that out HERE. 

The WTB Vulpine has been a tread design that has suited our gravel roads in the past, but for me it was always just too skinny. The 40mm was almost good enough, but by the time the 40mm Vulpine had come out I was riding some 45's and 47's from other brands that worked better here. So, you can imagine my stoke upon hearing that there would be a wider Vulpine. 

Initially I was not blown away by this wider Vulpine. And by the way, it lives up to its branding as it is almost 46mm wide on my 24mm internal width rims. The width is nice, but for some reason, the ride quality, at first, wasn't up to what I had experienced with the 36mm or 40mm version of this tire. 

But now that has seemed to come around. As I stated in my original post on these tires, I thought that perhaps the casings needed to break in. And it would appear that has happened now. The ride quality on harder surfaces is easy to feel. It is when things get a bit chunky and rough that this Vulpine gets challenged in terms of ride quality. It isn't terrible, but it is not as smooth feeling as I would have hoped for, based on my previous Vulpine experiences. 

Oddly enough, this Vulpine rolls almost as freely on pavement as does the Vulpine S variant on this design. I did not expect that. The Vulpine at 45mm also would be my go-to on smaller gravel, smoother dirt roads, or harder roads with embedded rocks. I did not really like how it handled the chunkier gravel when I encountered that. Looser crushed rock is okay on this tire, but I found that the tire wants to roll sideways a bit too much when trying to roll forward over the looser, chunkier gravel. 

So Far... 

I would swap to this tire whenever our roads went into smoother seasons, which is typically Winter and eraly Spring here. Or this would be my tire if I were riding to and from gravel via some pavement. 

I think the Vulpine S is a better choice for people that mix a lot of pavement in with a little gravel, and maybe this would be the tire if you had a little pavement and a lot of gravel. That said, I'm going with the 50mm Resolute for mixed terrain rides because of its versatile tread and that extra girth in the casing. 

I almost hate to say this, because I'll sound like a broken record, (does anyone know what that means out there?), but I wish that the Vulpine was also available as a 50mm tire. Or maybe I should just ride a Resolute 50mm tire and shut up. Ha! 

Stay tuned for the Vulpine S update coming soon.

Programming Note: Tomorrow there is breaking Gravel Grinder News at 9:00am Central. There will be another post at the usual time for you early bird US readers and foreign readers to check out, but keep in mind that there will be two posts up tomorrow. Thanks for reading Guitar Ted Productions!