PRODUCT REVIEW
MOSTLY ROAD
Fitting the tyres just prior to winter, my first
impressions were that Avon wasn’t making up the
wet weather performance. With the majority of
my rides including some kind of damp element,
the Trialriders impressed me with their road-
holding abilities. Considering I ride the Rally at
pretty much 9/10ths as soon as the road gets
twisty, I was very pleased to be able to confidently
lean it in without so much as a worry thanks to the
progressive profile of the rubber.
Okay, hitting a patch of slick tar in the wet still
complicates things – they have a high silica
content, not glue – but even then the Avon’s still
always hook right back up.
A LITTLE OFF-ROAD
When it comes to that 10% off-road performance,
it seems Avon have been pretty honest here as well.
So far, of the roughly 1500km I’ve ridden on them,
about 500km has been on gravel roads. This is
probably a little more than I anticipated, with a trip
down the Raglan-Kawhia coast and a good romp
around the backroads behind Port Waikato making
up most of the rough mileage they’ve seen.
To be fair, I wasn’t expecting huge things from
them in gravel, particularly in terms of lateral grip,
but they have surprised me to some extent.
While they won’t be kicking butt up a muddy
hillclimb – or sand dunes for that matter – they are
surprisingly predictable in terms of how much
KIWI RIDER 109