A set of dirt-oriented rubber can take you places you might struggle to get to otherwise . Camping high on the Denniston Plateau
LIGHTWEIGHT ADVENTURE GASGAS ES700 ENDURO The ES700 comes fitted with one of the stalwart tyres of adventure riding , Continental ’ s TKC80 . They ’ re good tyres that are great on the tar-seal and decent in gravel and dry dirt conditions . Get any further off-road than that and they can struggle , especially if it ’ s muddy . They work well on midsized and large capacity adventure bikes . Wanting to get much deeper off-road into the harder 4WD tracks and old mining tracks that abound on the West Coast , I wanted a full-on knobbly . But I wanted to ride on the road to get there . Enter Metzeler ’ s MC360s , fully road-legal dirt tyres . I fitted a set of Mid-soft , which , as the name suggests , are for softer terrain - not that the compound is soft . In fact , they ’ re the same compound as the Mid-hard option but they ’ ve got longer knobs and a slightly different pattern for digging into softer ground . On tar seal the tyres are quite loud when you ’ re up around 80-100km / h , which is to be expected from a dirt tyre . They do a decent job
About 1500km in and leading edge ooking worn but plenty of life left
46 KIWI RIDER