If you don’t always know what type of terrain you’ll be encountering, then intermediate tires are the way to go. The tread pattern is closer than the soft terrain tire and the compound is slightly softer. The intermediate terrain tire is obviously the in-between tire that is well suited to the weekend trail rider that has to deal with a wide variety of terrain.
Intermediate Terrain Dirt Bike Tires Intermediate Terrain Tire The wider knob spacing helps with self-cleaning in muddy conditions. Better suited to terrain like sand, loam, and muddy conditions. The harder compound of the soft terrain tire helps to prevent the knobs from breaking away due to the wider spacing. The difference in the tread pattern of a soft terrain tire is that the knobs are taller and wider spaced to help the tire ‘scoop’ the soft terrain to achieve traction. Ironically, a dirt bike tire made for soft terrain is manufactured from a harder compound. Soft Terrain Dirt Bike Tires Soft Terrain Tire It is best to use the same rubber compound on both the front and rear tires. Put simply: Hard rubber compounds suit soft terrain surfaces, while softer rubber compounds suit harder terrain surfaces. Understanding the differences between hard, intermediate, and soft terrain tires is the first step to choosing the correct tire for your dirt bike. Matching the right dirt bike tire to the terrain you ride is the key to getting the best performance out of your tires. If you do a lot of street miles, you’ll get a lot more mileage out of a 50/50 or 60/40 tire than you will out of a 10% street/90% dirt tire. The lower to mid-price range Dual Sport tires. The tires below range from about $67 up to $110. You’ll get better mileage out of the higher-priced tires. Whether you mainly ride off-road in soft, intermediate, or hard terrain or a mix of whatever you encounter. Knowing this will help you with the second major decision, the tire compound. What terrain do you mostly ride off-road? You need to weigh up what percentage split suits your riding habits. The tires below range from 60% street/40% dirt through to 10% street/ 90% dirt. Some riders only ride on the street long enough to get to the next trail, while others like adventure riders do almost 50/50 street/trail. Michelin AC10 Dual Sport Tire – 10% street, 90% dirt.Dunlop D606 Dual Sport Tire – 10% street, 90% dirt – Best Intermediate Terrain Dual Sport Tire.
Knobs may even break off at highway speeds, which is why tires like the Continental TKC80 (below at No.3) have larger and shallower knobs. The more aggressive tread patterns with tall widely spaced knobs will obviously wear quicker, be noisier, and may be prone to squirming (knob flexing) on bends. But that’s the tradeoff for off-road capability. They aren’t like a 100% road tire, they will wear faster than a road tire, purely because there is less rubber on the road. They’re OK on the road provided you keep in mind what you’re riding on, but be careful on wet roads. The Dual Sport and Adventure tires compared below would fall into the category of ‘street-legal knobbies’. In this review, I am looking at tires that are street legal, that are DOT approved. When choosing the best Dirt Bike tires for Dual Sport and Adventure riding you first need to consider where you spend most of your time riding, and the types of off-road terrain you mostly ride on.ĭirt Bike tires are categorized into percentage on/off-road use.