Tried and tested: Avon’s TrailRider tyre
It’s the latest rubber offering from British company Avon but it’s more than just another Adventure bikesuitable tyre. The TrailRider is capable of blistering performance and reassuring stability when fully loaded.
IT HAS taken Avon two full years to develop the TrailRider tyre – specifically designed for the type of Adventure bike rider who’s more road-biased than grand-adventure off-roader. Okay, so that’s basically 99% of modern motorcyclists, but consider the range of things that tyres need to deliver for the GS-cum-Multistrada-cum-XR crowd these days.
High mileage, extreme grip, stability and impeccable performance under heavy loads, making a new tyre for the Adventure market is a much tougher proposition than a sportbike tyre. Factor in some off-road ability and the headaches in putting together these black hoops multiply immensely.
During the 300km long launch in German, dipping into Austria and back up into the mountainous routes around Munich, Avon were keen to talk about the use of multibelt technology and sipes. All very impressive and these are technologies that the company has used on tyres like the 3D-XM and others in the range.
The multibelt tech (called an Advanced Variable Belt construction) allows the company to build the right amount of flex into the tyre’s sidewalls and the sipes mean that when the tyre is upright then it has extra grooves in the tread pattern to help the tyre shift water and keep temperatures within the optimum range. Lean the tyre over however and the sipes’ ‘teeth’ cut into the pattern close up and the grooves effectively close up to increase the effective level of grip when leant right over.
Then the Melksham-based manufacturer added a zerodegree jointless steel belt around the tyre circumference. On top of that goes Avon’s latest tri-compound tread, with a softer compound on the tread edge, for more grip, a harder centre compound for mileage, and under the surface tread is a low-hysteresis bonding compound. The tread compounds themselves are very high in silica, for increased wet weather performance.
The TrailRider gets an all-new computer-developed tread pattern, with what it calls ‘Enhanced Aqua Flow’ grooves, to clear water faster.
Avon’s motorcycle design engineer, Ashley Vowles, said: “We’ve designed the TrailRider carcass construction to deliver improved grip and handling. Our chemists have come up with a new super-rich silica compound, using the latest compounding technology to enhance wet grip without affecting mileage.
“We’ve also used a multicompound tread on the rear radial models, giving softer tread on the edge for better grip, and a harder compound in the centre of the tyre for better mileage.”