WORDS: DENE HUMPHREY
PHOTOS: GEOFF OSBORNE
The front tyre grips when leaning in
mud or on rock, and is brilliant in mud
under heavy straight line braking
MITAS C18 & C19 TYRES
itas tyres has a huge range of
motorcycle tyres on the market, in fact,
far more than I expected. After a browse
through the website I learnt a whole lot about
the brand and its different compounds, tread
patterns and carcass strengths. Basically,
Mitas seems to have every conceivable terrain
covered, for dirt and road.
To separate the different compounds of MX
and Enduro tyres they have a clever colour
coding system, which is marked on each tyre.
There are four colours, Red, White, Yellow
and Green. Red stripe is a full on motocross
competition tyre. White stripe is for winter
use, spiking, ice motocross... so not for NZ.
The yellow stripe is a softer compound
suitable for enduro, FIM and cross country,
and the green stripe has a softer carcass and
an extra soft tread compound suitable for
extreme hard enduro competition.
Mitas has a massive range on offer so check
out their website to choose a pattern and
64 KIWI RIDER
compound to suit your kind of riding. For this
test we slipped on a yellow stripe C18 rear and
a yellow C19 super front to the mighty KTM
300EXC TPI, which needs every bit of added
traction it can find.
I must admit that I’m not one for changing
my tyres for every occasion... so true to form
the 300 has been trying to destroy this pair
of Mitas tyres for 30 hours of enduro, cross
country and even motocross torture. To put it
simply... I am impressed.
My first ride on them was in wet, muddy
rocky terrain with steep hills and roots. The
front tyre grips when leaning in mud or on
rock, and is brilliant in mud under heavy
straight line braking – this is running at 13
psi. The C18 rear is a true winner in this type
of terrain too; let it down to around 8 psi and
hang on! There’s really impressive straight line
grip on rock and clay, it allows you to roll off
the throttle to find that grip then roll back on
and tractor up the climb.