Tyres are one of the most important components on your bike.
They’re the only thing (if it’s all going well) in contact with the ground; all your turning, braking, accelerating and general bike handling is executed through them.
If they’ve got an unsuitable tread pattern for the conditions, or are made from hard, unforgiving rubber, you’re going to have a bad time on the trails.
There are also myriad combinations, with any given model offered in a wide range of carcass or casing types, rubber compounds and widths – all designed to cater to specific conditions and rider needs.
I tested six winter tyres suited to hardcore trail and enduro riding, and the four most important things I learnt may surprise you.
But before I go any further, here are the six tyres I tested and links to each of the reviews:
- Continental Argotal Enduro Soft review
- Maxxis High Roller III review
- Michelin Wild Enduro MS Racing Line review
- Pirelli Scorpion Race Enduro T review
- Schwalbe Magic Mary Radial Gravity Pro review
- WTB Vigilante SG1 review
1. Carcass construction can ruin a tyre’s feel
Rubber compound is the most important thing on a tyre, but sitting in a very close second is carcass construction.
Not only is it important because its the biggest contributor to puncture protection, but its construction – the number of plies and their orientation, its threads per inch (TPI) and the extent of each layer’s coverage – plays a huge role in feel.
What makes a tyre feel good?
Its carcass needs to absorb harshness and chatter from the trail like the type of bump and vibration that won’t make a suspension fork move.
But it needs to do so without feeling vague or wallowing, remaining stiff enough to accurately and precisely translate rider inputs into direction changes.
Finally, it must resist punctures from rips and tears, but also be robust enough and firmly seated onto the rim’s hook so it doesn’t fold, crease or deform in turns. This can cause air to burp or the tyre to rip off the rim altogether.
There’s no denying tyre carcasses have a tough gig.
Take the Continental Enduro casing Argotal I tested, for example.
This uses a 110 TPI two- and three-ply casing, where each layer is made from relatively thin threads woven closely together.
The sidewall section has two and there are three under the tread, giving a floppy and malleable feel off the bike.
While the casing’s flexibility sounds like a potential winner to erase hand-hurting vibrations, on the trail the Argotal lets some harsh, buzzy feelings creep in.
Although far from terrible, lined up next to the monstrously heavy WTB Tough casing Vigilante, the difference is palpable.
On the same trails, over the same bumps, the Vigilante feels closer to a steamroller, muting unwanted inputs so they don't reach your hands.
The Vigilante’s dual-ply 60 TPI carcass, made from fewer, thicker threads, contributes significantly here; not only is it less ‘floppy’ off the bike, on the trails it’s more absorbent and holds its structure better – even at lower pressures.
Air pressure is very important
To get a thinner-casing tyre – such as the Continental Enduro – to have the same amount of stability and support as a thicker one, you need to run it harder.
Higher pressures are great for helping tyres maintain their structure, but do little to improve damping. Inflating them more increases the ‘surface tension’ of the carcass, reducing how easily it can deform.
To boot, this increased rigidity can lead to more punctures from slashes or tears.
So why does a thicker, less malleable tyre feel better?
Firstly, you can run it at lower pressures without impacting its structural integrity; push hard through a berm with a lightweight tyre and a heavyweight tyre both set to the same pressure and you’ll notice how much the lighter one squirms.
Because of the strength of the carcass, lower pressures have little effect on the tougher tyre’s structure but reduce the overall ‘carcass tension’, helping it better absorb inputs from the trail compared to a skinny tyre inflated to a higher pressure.
Construction difference
The thicker threads and number of plies add to this further.
Imagine hitting a deflated balloon laid flat on a hard surface; it’s not going to provide much, if any, cushioning for your hand – it’s unable to absorb any of your hand’s energy.
Now swap the balloon for a thick rubber sheet and do the same. The denser, heavier material can absorb your hand’s energy.
In the simplest terms, tyre casings emulate this – thin ones can’t absorb as much energy as thicker ones and therefore don’t feel as cushioned.
You can achieve similar levels of absorption by using lower pressures in thinner tyres, but then you run the risk of pinch flats or ripping it clean off the rim.
2. Rubber compounds could be softer
While carcass construction can help alter a tyre’s feel and influence grip to a certain extent, it’s the rubber compound that really matters.
When trail technicality turns up a notch with highly polished, diagonal roots, without tacky rubber you can be left floundering for traction.
Testing tyres back-to-back highlights the differences here.
Ridden in isolation, your expectation of how much grip there is adapts quickly, but once you’ve tested a tacky tyre against a plasticky tyre on the same trails you can readily spot the differences.
While Schwalbe’s Magic Mary Radial Gravity Pro tyre provides one of the most damped carcasses out there, it loses traction (pun intended) when it comes to rubber compound, even with the brand’s Addix Ultra Soft formula.
Compared to the marvellously tacky Michelin Wild Enduro MS Racing Line, the Schwalbe has notably less grip on diagonal roots and rocks, and even greasy hardpack.
The Michelin’s rubber deforms audibly as you ride; the tread chews, squirms, twists and contorts itself to the trail’s smallest topographical changes, doing its best to mechanically and chemically adhere to the trail’s surface.
This feels epic and makes me wonder why brands don’t make their softest rubber compounds softer – like the Michelin’s – but also offer all their compound types for all their casings.
Schwalbe certainly has scope to make its Addix Ultra Soft compound softer yet, and Continental should be selling its enduro-casing tyres with the softest Supersoft compound.
Anecdotally, I remember ‘back in the day’, my racer friends and I would always search out the Maxxis Slow Reezay 40a tyres over the harder-compound Super Tacky 42a models for increased and more predictable grip.
The modern-day 3C MaxxGrip variants address that by combining these two compounds plus a harder one, but I’d still love to ride a full Slow Reezay 40a tyre if I could.
For hardcore winter riding, you should be searching out the tackiest rubber you can find.
3. Tread pattern is surprisingly unimportant
The caveat to this point is that within each tyre’s category, specific tread patterns are seemingly unimportant.
While you’re unlikely to want a semi-slick tyre in mud and a mud tyre for fireroads, within each of those categories how the knobs are shaped and placed seems to make less difference than the tyre compound or sidewall casing to both grip and feel.
For example, a tyre designed for softer ground will usually have chunky, widely spaced knobs, but having tested six tyres designed specifically for these conditions back-to-back, no one specific design stood out.
The Pirelli Scorpion Race Enduro T’s tread pattern’s conjoined three-block section looks as though it wouldn’t bite into soft ground, but out on the trails this was far from the case.
In fact, the Pirelli is one of the grippiest tyres I’ve ridden to date.
Likewise, the slightly shallower, more tightly packed knobs on Michelin’s Wild Enduro looked as though they'd struggle to penetrate the ground, but, again, the opposite seemed true – with this tyre rivalling the Scorpion for grip.
So what does matter?
For riding in soft ground, the knobs need to be more widely spaced compared to a tyre designed for intermediate or dry conditions.
The knobs need to be tall and relatively square so they can pierce the ground and have sharp ramps to provide braking grip.
However, the general number, location and format of the tyre’s tread blocks seems to be relatively unimportant, as each of the tyres I tested proved.
4. Heavy tyres don’t have to be slow
Again, I’ll start this one with a caveat.
If you’re comparing an XC tyre to a downhill tyre, the latter is clearly going to roll slower than the former.
But once weights get closer – say between an enduro tyre and a downhill tyre – there’s very little in it. The rubber compound has a much bigger effect on how quickly they roll compared to how much they weigh.
Of course, terrain type also influences bike speed. If you’re riding flatter trails, tacky, weighty tyres will slow things down compared to lighter ones, but increase the gradient slightly and the advantages of having more grip and damping will help you brake less and ride faster overall.
Of the tyres I tested, Maxxis’ High Roller III in the weightiest DH casing and tackiest 3C MaxxGrip compound felt as sprightly as the lighter and harder-compound Continental and Schwalbe tyres.
But it was also one of the grippiest across an incredibly broad range of conditions.
On greasy hardpack, it inspired confidence, so I spent less time dabbing my brakes – resulting in higher overall speed.
In steep terrain, on softer ground, I knew it would slow me down quickly and effectively so I braked later and harder – once again riding at a higher speed for longer.
Likewise, in the turns, I slowed down less to maintain control because I knew the tyres were going to stick every line I chose.
And finally, on slick roots and rocks, the HR III inspired confidence so I braked less, but also took a more direct route down the trail. Again, this resulted in higher overall speeds.
So, your weighty, damped, tacky hardcore tyres may roll slower on paper than a skinnier, slicker and lighter counterpart, but it’s not as simple as that.
Think about the conditions and terrain you’re riding, and it’s quite likely the chunkier tyres aren’t going to be any slower than their more slender counterparts.
