Tyre choice, it’s a fun old topic.

I want a new front tyre for enduro races and winter dh races. Mixed surfaces but it’s winter in the UK, so we can expect there to be a fair amount of water and mud about.

Read reviews, decide on some potential tyres. Maxxis shorty or magic Mary should be just the ticket. A nice grippy compound would be ideal. Both available in 3c maxx grip or vertstar respectively, but only in a casing weighing circa 1.2kg. That’s no good, it’s front tyre, a mid level Tubeless ready casing is what I’m after. And so the tyre choice frustration continues..

Anyone else find the manufactures don’t offer the combinations you want in the real world? I appreciate they can’t make every configuration, but grippy compound and Tubeless casing doesn’t seem unreasonable to me!

I appreciate this post is primarily a rant, and unless some of you work for maxxis or schwalbe I doubt you can help me, but thought I’d vent my frustration to the Internet!

Hans Dampf

Have you tried a 3C Maxx Terra Shorty?

What size?
Not a huge difference between maxxGrip and maxxTerra really.
3C (maxxterra), TR, EXO has been doing fine on the front for me. Looks like you’re looking at a DD casing which isn’t really needed on the front.

Yeah Maxx Terra or Trailstar are plenty sticky enough

On the front I tend not to go to the heavy casings.

So a Magic Mary in Trailstar or the Shorty equivalent should be lighter, grippy and man enough for the job. The Mary is quite frankly Magic early on but does tend to lose some bite but you don’t really notice until you put a fresh one on. The Shorty I hear tends to stay sharper for longer but I like the added volume of the Mary.

On the back I go SG.

For reference I did 87000m of Alpine descent on a Mary in August with no problems.

I am a fan of Procore and Huck Norris type systems which add a layer of security and confidence.

Love to talk tyres but the sun is out so i’m going for a ride!

I’d go for a lighter MM vertstar compound for winter riding, supergravity casing is overkill.

The Shorty I hear tends to stay sharper for longer but I like the added volume of the Mary.

You can now get a Shorty 2.5 which is about the same volume as the Magic Mary 2.35 – I put one on a few weeks back but the weather’s been too nice to use it!

3C maxxterra shorty is pretty close to vertstar mary IMO so possibly the closest to what you want. Depends if you wanted the volume of the mary though.

But yep, definitely agree, I don’t like how weight goes up with grip. It cuts both ways too, the dual dhr2 seems to be a bit too delicate, which seems to be the other end of the same thing. And weirdly WTB decided not to do soft rubber versions of some of their 29ers at all so versions that’d be soft in 650b, are harder in 29.

I suppose you do run into other issues, vertstar is pretty short lived and I found the knobs broke up really badly. I don’t mind a bit of fast wear if the performance justifies it, but if the tread doesn’t hold up the tyre just stops working properly. Maxxgrip I’ve only used in a minion and it’s holding up far better but that doesn’t mean it’d work on the shorty’s spikes.

I’d like a lighter der baron but conti can’t do carcasses so they need a 1kg tyre just to make it adequate. The old Baron went the other way, great tyre while it lasted but the sidewalls wore out before the knobs were even really worn. And they ain’t cheap

It’s all a compromise tbh, you just have to hope to find the compromise you want.

Cheers for the replies.

I’ve gone for the shorty Tubeless ready exo 3c maxx terra in the 2.5 wide trail to suit the 35mm rims I’ve just had built.

Reassuring to hear there’s not much between the maxx grip and the maxx terra, and that the maxx grip is similar to vertstar. Sounds like I’ve got the best compromise for what I wanted.

Cheers for turning a rant into some positive reassurance – I’ll just forget that a marginally grippier compound exists and crack on with riding I think!

I don’t like how weight goes up with grip

Yeah that annoys me too but:
The faster you go the more grip you need (when you need it). The faster you go the harder you hit things so need a tougher sidewall.
Tougher sidewall + more grip = more weight.
I guess that’s why the super tacky/maxxgrip etc are generally on DH tyres?

Bontrager SE5?

EDIT: Oh already bought something.

It’s a defintiely a frustration I can empathise with.

I ran MM as my DH-ish winter tyres for a couple of years. Supergravity casing meant I could get VertStar on the front and Trailstar on the back. I would have kept them on more but for the weight and the draaaaaaagggggg….

WRT the Maxxis lineup, I could get a 3C MaxxGrip Minion DHF2 2.5 in Exo casing!

stevied – Member

The faster you go the more grip you need (when you need it). The faster you go the harder you hit things so need a tougher sidewall.

Yeah, but it’s a rear specific tyre, so you don’t necessarily want sticky rubber on it. The dual dhr2’s a great partner for the 3c dhf except that it’s lighter and flimsier. It’s a bit weird

out of interest, where did you get them from?

Nothing to add here, but:

That’s a lot of verticality!

It spent £70 on a pair of all singing, all dancing Minions, which turned out to be disappointingly narrow for a 2.3″ tyre, the 2.2″ stock tyres were wider. The back buckled first ride out. They grip, but no better than the wire bead Trail Kings that came on the bike. Just ordered a MM Trailstar / HD Pacestar combo. I’d have preferred the SG casing, but without the draggy soft compound.

I ordered the shorty from Acycles. Never used them before but price was good and they were one of the only places to actually have them in stock.

I understand the faster you go, the harder you hit things argument, but there’s plenty of people who want to ride down slippery things slowly! To be honest I’ve never had a problem with the maxxis exo Tubeless casing, and I don’t tend to hit things gently, hence not wanting the extra weight penalty as I don’t think it’s necessary.

The fact people here have said they’d want the heavy casing but in a normal compound (which I can appreciate would be ideal somewhere dry and very rocky) highlights the challenge for manufactures I guess. We all want different things, and what seems an obvious choice to some is useless to others.

IN wet conditions I ve used a 29er MAXXIS Beever — and its been surprisingly good! On the back a Rubber queen (this is a HT so need better volume in the rear to prevent pinch flats). The beaver looks tiny (and is!) but works really well. I have also the slightly bigger beaver that came out more recently but not yet tried it.

Ive also been very pleased with the Vittoria Mezcal with graphene as a robust XC tyre (only tried it on the back, but seemed grippier than the Rocket Ron on the front

Shwalbe has a big gap between Trailstar and Vertstar compounds: https://www.schwalbetires.com/triple_star_compound_page

Maxxis MaxxTerra 3C is definitely softer than Trailstar without being as draggy and fast wearing as Verstar – somewhere between them both.

First impressions of the Shorty 2.3 MaxxTerra on the front have been great. I’ve had a Magic Mary 2.35 SG Vertstar on all summer on the bigger bike. I took my T130 out at the weekend with the Shorty and despite it coming up tiny by comparison it felt very grippy and predictable around a wet Cannock, which i’d have expected to be too firm for something like a shorty. Got a couple of PRs on descents which I think is very telling considering I’ve ridden there 15+ times and it was soaking at the weekend.

E13 TSR “race” for front (triple) “Plus” for rear (dual)….like a Mary but faster and tough. I run on an ID 30mm which squares them off a bit. I think they would be faster on something a shade narrower 26-28mm.

Amazingly tough….racked up about 8000 descents on sharp abrasive rock and all sorts of gnar. They just proved themselves on mud and loam. I was very surprised on the latter.
Good strong casing (like a Mary SG) and yet only 900gms.

A week in southern Spain reduced a new Hans Dampt to shreds (Trailstar 24 psi on the rear) had more than a few holes in the carcass and most of the knobs gone yet the Maxxis and Specialized tires on the trip looked fine at the end of the week.