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Mark Hinchliffe·
Tyres
··1 Comment·1 min read

AVON Trailrider Tyre Review

Adventure tyres for road and dirt

Avon Tyre made its first motorcycle tyre in 1911 and 110 years later the plant in Wiltshire, UK, is still going strong.

As many owners of adventure bikes will relate to, getting quality rubber in matched pairs is not as easy as road bikes, so when the CFMoto 650MT finally needed new rubber, the new Avon Trailriders appeared to be a great option.

Importer Pro Accessories provided a pair for review at a favourable price.

The triple-compound Trailriders are described as 10% offroad and 90% road.

The tread is over 5mm in the centre of the tyre and tapers off to just a couple of mm of tread depth on the edges, which offers great stability while cornering, while also offering excellent wear and grip characteristics under all conditions.

So far, they have performed extremely well in both wet and dry conditions on the road. The tyres have been exceptionally quiet, for a ‘chunky’ tread design and the stability under all conditions has been without question.

The main interest for this type of tyre is their ability to handle a dirt road and possibly less favourable conditions.

For this test, we headed south from Brisbane on the Ripley Rd with a myriad of surfaces as it winds its way through the hills towards the town of Beaudesert.

We started out with 33psi front and 35psi rear, as per the recommended road pressures, but dropped them to 27 front and 29psi rear for the dirt.

The levels of grip and predictable sliding was quite encouraging. 

I tested out the non-switchable ABS (on purpose!) and the control even at reasonable speeds and under heavy braking was excellent and controllable.

I believe the pressures could be lowered another 2psi and it would improve further.

The AVON Trailriders proved to be very capable offroad tyres, with a very comfortable ride under all conditions so far. 

We will update with wear characteristics in a few thousand kilometres.

Note: For those riders looking for a version with more offroad bias, please see AVON’s Trekrider range.

As tested:

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Mark Hinchliffe
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One Comment

  1. Review in Avon Trailrider tires

    I have mix feelings about these tires. I like the way they handle on the road when dry. The problem I have with them is on a wet road.

    The rear tire feels good and planted. No problems with the rear what so ever. I actually like it. I’ve only had the rear slide under me once. I was leaving my house on a dry day and I went on a main road. I accelerated a bit hard and the rear went out for a second or two. Never had that happened to me before. But this is the first bike I own that is not a sport bike and the tires were cold. Still, it wasn’t full acceleration for the tire to had given out. I kept the throttle open and the bike recovered with no problem.

    The front though, it feels good on dry pavement. On a wet road it feels OK, but when I hit even a shallow puddle of water the front feels a bit loose. That is the best way I can explain it.

    This is the first set of tires that I put on my Tenere 700 after taking off the OEM tires, but I don’t believe that it’s the bike because I rode my bike in the rain twice with the OEM tires and I don’t recall having that feeling at the front.

    I wish manufactures released water tests results they do on their tires. I’m not interested on just their construction and how much grip they have, but how good they can evacuate water at different speeds. Specially at higher speeds.

    My theory is that average speeds people drive/ride here in the US are higher than in most other countries. One of the reason why Yamaha requieres the routine maintenance on my T7 to be performed every 4,000 miles, rather than the 6,000 miles for the T7’s sold in other countries.

    May be Avon designed the tires with the mentality that the bulk of their tire sales is in the EU.

    That is why I wish I could look at water evacuation tests of tires at different speeds. Specially at speed more compartible to the speeds we are used to here in the US. I am not talking crazy fast in the rain.

    The other rainy day I was doing 55-60 mph most of the time I was on the freeway. Compared to the 75-80mph cruising speed I generally do on a dry day.

    The other thing is when you see magazines and people testing tires or giving a review, the vast majority of time they either never test them in the rain or barely (if at all) mention wet performance.

    I get it, it doesn’t rain everyday, but there are track and other testing courses they could use to test them. Of course nothing beats putting a few miles on them out in the real world on a good rainy day, and on different types of roads. One reason to me the bast majority of so called tests and reviews are pretty useless.

    One thing I look for are videos of tires ai am interested in in YouTube, I always do a search for a test or review of the tires in the wet. They are extremely hard to come by.

    It seems that when magazine claim that they do good or great in the rain they either are assuming based on the compounds used to make the tires, or they go wit the manufactures claims.

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