Jumping on the trials tire bandwagon

ride report on the front D803 and MT43 rear trials tires

I just finished up 2 and 1/2 days riding with the tire combo over new years day. 1 and 1/2 days of single track in the AR Brock Creek riding area, both in the established riding areas and new trails in 25 square miles that the FS gave to the local club to develop single track in, some awesome stuff in there. The other day was spent doing a 190 mile dual sport ride to get an Oark Cafe burger, mostly FS roads and some ATV two track. 60 miles of it was in the dark with the sucky stock TE250 headlight that died all just before it got totally dark. I rode using the lights of the other bikes in our group.

The taller rear tire dropped my 50 mph cruise rpm by 700. The rear is definately a keeper. I ran 7.5 psi the entire time and the traction was good every where and it helped bigtime with uphills. Traction downhills was good also if you didn't lock it up, then it felt like I had a rear brake problem. It felt and held up fine on pavement and dirt roads at speeds up to 60 mph.

I'm not so sure about the front. The front was either amazing or putting me on the ground. On anything solid like rocks and dirt, the braking traction was amazing and even put me over the bars on one steep downhill single track section. It also felt really good while riding standing and putting a little more weight on the front end. Getting the front light when powering out of turns, directional control suffered compared to a knobby. On loose stuff like the mud into and out the occasional mud holes and wet spots on the trail it was like hitting a patch of ice. Piles of pine needles were also kind of slippery. Leaves on the trail were not noticibly worse than normal. It had good traction in the streams on wet rocks. On dirt roads (not loose gravel) and pavement it worked pretty well also once you got used to the different feel of it when leaning in the turns, even at higher speeds. The wet sections on the dirt roads with some mud were scary with the lack of directional control.
Overall, the plushness was nice and it was decent as long as you didn't hit any loose stuff and went slow, but I wouldn't trust it pushing hard at higher speeds on the trail. The 803 is coming off. I am going to give the MT43 front a try to see if its any better in the loose stuff (taller and differently shaped knobs) and to see if it retains some of the trials tire advantages while being less of a compromise than the 803 was (really good in some areas and really bad in others), kind of like the MT43 rear being still decent off-road but far less compromised than the radial trials competition tires on pavement and higher speeds.

Yep, you nailed it
I could not agree more.
The front trials tire is a love hate thing. Tight single track is great for sticking on the rocks and off camber stuff. But has very little ability to offer much steering at speed or cornering. I replaced my front trials with the MotoZ tire and an very impressed. Lugs are deep enough to offer bite through the leaves and pine needle stuff. I like how the tire is more square than rounded, nice big foot print like a trials tire. It does well at lower air pressure also, sucks up the little sticks and roots.
The MT-43 for the rear is just plain hard to do much better for "overall" performance. The MotoZ rear does well, but the MT-43 has far less rear "step outs" when crossing small trees and for sticking to slick angled rocks the MT-43 shines. What I find interesting is when climbing steep loose grades, the knob tires sure cut a path but when running the MT-43 you can not even tell where I rode.
Just my 2-cents.

X-Circuit front and back.
On a WR-250, 130x18 on the back, works well but I think a 120 size would be better for that bike.

I just completed the Wabeno, WI AMA/KTM dualsport event with the MT43 on the front. I ran 7.5 in the MT43 rear and 11 in the front.
http://www.amadirectlink.com/roadride/ds/schedule.asp?s=72&eyear=2009
The MT43 front is a much, much better all around off road tire than the Dunlop 803. Day one was 154 miles of forest service roads, atv trails, snowmobile trails, and two single track "hero" sections. Day two, for me, consisted of doing the three "hero" sections over and over and not doing much of the DS part of the planned route. All the hero sections were narly single track enduro routes, just awesome to ride. The was also a grass track course probably 1.5 to 2 miles long. I have never ridden one of these and couldn't believe how much fun it was to blast around and how good the traction was on it. I had read of these before in enduro race reports and never thought that they would be something all that exciting. WI is a lot less rocky, with far less elevation change on the trails, with far fewer stream crossings than Arkansas. Though there were lots of short steep up and downs. A lot of the ATV trails are pretty deep sand. The MT43 front was excellent in all the single track even when it was muddy and boggy where the speeds were lower. It wasn't as good as a knobby in the deep sand and deep mudd, but wasn't horrible either. I am going to keep it on for now until its worn, but will probably replace it with a MT 44 front knobby then.

another update about the front trials tires. I mounted up the mt44 knobbie front and was able to compare it to the MT43 trials tire in the same riding area a week apart.

http://www.jennyandterrythompson.com/Timber Way.htm

Overall the knobbie front just feels better when riding the bike hard when leaning over and changing direction a lot, overall traction on firm or rocky ground was similar when upright but the knobbie is much better in anything loose or on the side of the tire.

Overall, for my riding, the pirelli MT43 trials rear is a keeper but the trials front doesn't belong on the bike.
Terry