I bought this tire to put on a spare rim for my 511 and use for DS. I had just popped my Dunlop 803 trials tire and wanted to ride the next day and always wanted to try one of these off road so what the heck, I mounted it up to my wonderful 02 CR250. After mounting it and looking at it I kinda expected to hate it off road. Started with 9 pounds as it is a stiff tire. Felt hard as a rock and unforgiving especially right after running a uber soft trials tire. Worked Ok but hard and not very tractionful. I dropped the pressure to 7 PSI, still feels stiff by hand but much better ride and better traction. Then I dropped it to 6 PSI and worked on the rear suspension some. I tend to change rear suspension settings when i run a trials tire and some of my changes were dialing that out. Now it feels better and hooks up better.
Did 40 miles. The trails were a mix of hard pack clay base with some silt on top to new trails with loam and grass. More I rode and adjusted to the tire and got my PSI and suspension setting closer to ideal I started liking the tire just fine. It moves around much more than a trials tire does (everything does) but once used to it I really began to trust it. Feels loose but will only step out a little bit then holds a line and was quite predictable for me. Much like a trials tire it much prefers to be lugged and loaded than lit up and spinning. If you short shift and lug the bike a lot and ride with finesse you might like it. If you like to grab handfuls of throttle and fan the clutch a lot all MX style you will not. It worked very acceptable for me and my trail riding. maybe not a race tire but with 4-6 pounds in it could be a good VERY long lasting summer tire for some. I would say it works very well on hard pack and embedded rock. Seems crazy robust even at 6 psi. The leading edges are still very square and 40 miles shows pretty much zero wear. I know guys that get 2500-3000 miles out of these on big DS bikes so I bet 2000 off road will be EZ.
Summery - Tire is good enough to stay on the bike and get more miles of testing. Guessing it is going to be a crappy mud tire but is quite acceptable for fast summer trail riding so far for me. Buddy with a TE310 rode my bike (loved it BTW and reported it is the best running 250 2 stroke ever with the Lectron) and did not notice the tire at all which is a good thing. He thought it hooked up well and did nothing wrong and is thinking about running one. His bike had knobs at about 50% and we both agreed my bike hooked up better on the dry stuff we were riding. I really feel you could run 4 or 5 PSI and be OK with this tire. Heck, I think you might be able to run it flat and not notice much. Initial impressions are it is a slightly better tire than I had thought. Should be a good super long lasting dry summer tire for trail riding.
Will report back with more miles.
Did 40 miles. The trails were a mix of hard pack clay base with some silt on top to new trails with loam and grass. More I rode and adjusted to the tire and got my PSI and suspension setting closer to ideal I started liking the tire just fine. It moves around much more than a trials tire does (everything does) but once used to it I really began to trust it. Feels loose but will only step out a little bit then holds a line and was quite predictable for me. Much like a trials tire it much prefers to be lugged and loaded than lit up and spinning. If you short shift and lug the bike a lot and ride with finesse you might like it. If you like to grab handfuls of throttle and fan the clutch a lot all MX style you will not. It worked very acceptable for me and my trail riding. maybe not a race tire but with 4-6 pounds in it could be a good VERY long lasting summer tire for some. I would say it works very well on hard pack and embedded rock. Seems crazy robust even at 6 psi. The leading edges are still very square and 40 miles shows pretty much zero wear. I know guys that get 2500-3000 miles out of these on big DS bikes so I bet 2000 off road will be EZ.
Summery - Tire is good enough to stay on the bike and get more miles of testing. Guessing it is going to be a crappy mud tire but is quite acceptable for fast summer trail riding so far for me. Buddy with a TE310 rode my bike (loved it BTW and reported it is the best running 250 2 stroke ever with the Lectron) and did not notice the tire at all which is a good thing. He thought it hooked up well and did nothing wrong and is thinking about running one. His bike had knobs at about 50% and we both agreed my bike hooked up better on the dry stuff we were riding. I really feel you could run 4 or 5 PSI and be OK with this tire. Heck, I think you might be able to run it flat and not notice much. Initial impressions are it is a slightly better tire than I had thought. Should be a good super long lasting dry summer tire for trail riding.
Will report back with more miles.
