Clement LCV Tire Long-Term Review

The Timeframe

After an entire summer on these tires, we've put together some thoughts.  First, lets get this out of the way: Clement sent these tires to us for review, we didn't pay for them.  Phew, I feel better.  These were installed on a set of ENVE SES 3.4 rims and ridden on both an aluminum Spooky Mulholland as well as a steel Cielo Road Racer.  With roughly 1,100 miles on the tires, they've seen a lot and it's time for us to share our experiences.

Performance

These tires are light.  199g and 205g on our scales.  Put some latex tubes inside of them and they feel faaaaast.  They are replacing my favorites, a pair of Vittoria Open Pave 27s.  I lost some volume moving to the 25 LCV, but they still rode really well.  No, they don't have the plushness of an open tubular 27 like the Pave, but they were damn good.

Dry road grip was really, really great.  Cornering on some fast descents feels like you're piloting a slot car, really pretty incredible.  That said, wet road grip was pretty scary.  Standing to climb on a wet surface could easily leave the tire spinning.  And descending in the wet?  Forget about it.

Knowing this, and using the LCV as your dry-weather race tire, you'll be rewarded with some pretty incredible performance.

Durability

I hesitate to say that any tire is durable, rather share when a tire isn't durable.  These tires, after about 800-900 miles, were flawless.  For the vast majority of their time tested I couldn't have asked for more.  But, once to approximately 1,000 miles, flats started.  Getting flats on worn tires isn't something alien to me, but I would have liked to have seen more than 1,000 miles before that started in.

Once the flats began, they were difficult to stop.  The rear tire is now showing dozens of small cuts, the front has roughly half as many.  Those cuts may as well be welcoming in foreign objects, because it's now rare to go for a ride without a flat.

Again, knowing that you're going to use these as your race tires, 1000 miles of exceptional dry-weather performance would last quite a while.