Tires, Tires, And More Tires
TIRES, TIRES, AND MORE TIRES
LONG-TERM
WRAP-UP
Big adventure bikes have an insatiable appetite for rubber. Each machine is on its fifth set of tires (including the stock sets). Due to the significant number of off-road miles, knobbies have won the day. After trying out Kenda’s (kendatire.com) Big Blocks (which were great in the dirt but not so grippy on road), we returned to our favorite ADV tire, Continental’s (contionline.com) TKC80. Not only do these tires bring out the very best in these bikes off highway-clawing for traction in Mexican silt, climbing up slickrock faces in Utah, plowing through boulder gardens in Colorado, and hopping over tree roots in the Sierras-but
they work well on asphalt too. They are easily the single best performance modification you can make to a big ADV machine. The shortest life we recorded on a set of TKC80S was less than 1,000 miles, while our best was almost 3,000. For the New Year’s journey into Baja, we mounted up Conti TKC70s
on the GSA. Jeff Allen was impressed with their overall performance but felt a knobby front was well warranted for the peninsula’s ample sand and silt (we will definitely be trying a TKC70/80 cocktail soon). But for now we’re curious to see how many miles we can get on the 70s before our bike gets repo'd
BC
