The last time I ordered a set of Schwalbe Marathons on Amazon, the seller shipped them folded—something I hadn’t seen before and wasn’t happy about. Are Marathon E-Plus tires even meant to be folded? The tires arrived tightly bent, with visible kinks along the bead. I left them in the garage for a week, and they mostly straightened out—enough to mount. But the folding had damaged the inner sidewall, which eventually wore a hole in my tube. Schwalbe honored the warranty and sent a replacement—this time shipped flat, as it should be.
If you order Schwalbe Marathon tires online and they come “folded” send them back.
byu/Mysterious-Series135 inbikecommuting
by Mysterious-Series135
3 Comments
Folding a folding bead tire is not a problem. Folding a wire bead tire is a problem.
If it’s folded correctly it shouldn’t be a problem and the bead shouldn’t be kinked.
You can get away with twisting them once into a figure 8 so they fit in a smaller box, but what that flyer shows is waaaaaay too tight to wind a heavy tire with a thick wire bead like a Marathon.