[Closed] Vigilante or magic Mary or something else?

Minion DHF are ideal for trail centres and local woody trails. I’ve used them for years; predictably grippy, great rolling speed, decent weight and they last for ever.

Magic Marys more appropriate for Mud \ roots (if by trail centre you mean hardpack trails), And I'm sure you realise it but don't put a Magic Mary on the rear.

Fod off piste, Mary
Trail centre, DHF

HTH .😁

I would out a ‘fast’ wtb tyre on the front tbh.

Dhf 3c exo max Terra for me on the front for all round trail centres and hardpack.

Magic Mary a bit more natural stuff but passable on hardpack. You want addix soft of the recently replaced version. New ones are heavy.

Spec Butcher as a usually cheaper alternative to the DHF.

Fod off piste, Mary

Right now I'm thinking I could do with a bit more bite on the front than my Mary so I'm thinking Hillbilly or Shorty. Any experience of those?

I run a dhf most year round but swap to a shorty front for fod off piste type stuff around December. Just seems to grip better than anything I’ve tried. Tried running a shorty front and rear before, slow ain’t the word!
If it was more hard pack I think I would stick dhf or vigilante

And I’m sure you realise it but don’t put a Magic Mary on the rear.

Whys that then ?

Whys that then ?

Very grippy .

Right now I’m thinking I could do with a bit more bite on the front than my Mary so I’m thinking Hillbilly or Shorty. Any experience of those?

Depends on what your idea of off piste is really!? If it’s the harder pack stuff then you probably won’t notice much difference, although the Shorty has less squirm than the Mary.

If you riding the steeper, less known stuff which still has a layer of loam (mud!) then I would say a Verdict Wet, tough, high grip with the Judge on the back (which is like a beefed up DHR2).

They are probably the grippiest tyre combo I’ve used. The Verdict Wet is a monster.

I’ve had a vigilante 29x2.6 on the front for the last year. High grip tough compound. It’s been fine 99% of the time and certainly would have no problem on trail centre surfaces.
Found it’s limits the other week though, on steep,low speed, blind, wet loam with a surface of pine needles. (Win hill off piste) It clogged very quickly and left me wanting more bite. Most of the guys that day had similar issues.
Regards magic Mary, I have one in 26 x 2.35 on my old full suss. It always seemed to have enough grip, but I didn’t ride the sort of trails that found the limits of the vigilante on it. It would be draggy as hell on the back.

Very grippy

Will suck the enjoyment out of longer rides but it's good resistance training. 😜

For pure trail centre the Marys might be overkill, you could consider Hans Dampfs front and rear, this is what I used when I first started riding. When I branched out to riding off piste or non trail centre spots switched to dual Mary's. Even a Hans front and Nobby Nic rear would roll really well at a trail centre

And I’m sure you realise it but don’t put a Magic Mary on the rear.

I loved my Mary on the rear, yes it was a lil extra slog on climbs but the grip and braking was excellent and confidence inspiring!

I just swapped my rear Mary for the Big Betty which I have found to roll much better than the Mary but brakes the same. Come summer time I am going to try Bettys on the front and rear.

I should state, I favour Schwalbe tyres, not a fan boy, but prefer the price and have no understanding of the Maxxis range of compounds! Atleast Schwalbe have info on their website which explains their range!

I have a Maxxis Minion DHF Folding 3C EXO on the front of one bike, it’s a brilliant overall tyre and Ive not had any real problems.

On my other bike I have a WTB Vigilante TCS G2 Tough High Grip on the front. It’s a substantial tyre with pretty outstanding grip, better in some conditions than the Minion but not quite as consistent across all conditions.

I’m quite happy to trust both of them on everything from local trails to Dyffi and Revolution although the Minion would be be the best all rounder for me. 🙂

Use Magic Mary's all year round on the enduro, tend to stick to Super Gravity casing as well, reality is you need to sync your tyres for what you're doing, the enduro does the uplift stuff and trail centre bits, so BPW, Wind Hill, etc, if you are jumping a lot and landing heavy a lot, then you want a super gravity case or a double down case, which means more weight and more slog on normal stuff.

Just now i'm pretty much just doing the off-piste stuff around FoD, so the usual site (Barnhill), but also Mallards, Oakenhill, etc, and i had to remove the mary's due to the depth of the mud, if it's this type of stuff you're riding then maybe look at mud style tyres, like Shorty's (DD casing), Mary's are good, but they struggle to shed mud as well, and for steep off-piste stuff that's not a good thing.

I've been riding Mallards and over towards Shutcastle a lot recently and it's gopping at the moment. We've been avoiding Barnhill (that's my learn something new for the day, we've always called it Wastelands...) as it's probably quite sketchy right now.

Yeah, Wastelands is one of the runs there, everyone seems to just call it the barnhill enclosure as there's a few areas with lots of stuff, folk just keep calling that bit 'off-piste' as if it's the only one, i too try and avoid that one as it's just a bit too busy and well used, so getting hammered, and not been to Shutcastle since the forestry work at Dowies, just a bit of a diversion for a few runs, and it's wet as last time i was there!

Mallards is the main reason i'm on shorty's now, both sides of the road, it's just mud central, one run it's deep, soft and wet mud that you slide a bit in, then on the next run it's the claggy stuff that just fills your tyres up, then again the forestry are up there logging, so a few of the black trails down to the road are pretty much getting culled just now.

I mostly ride fod off piste as well, usually wastelands as I dig up there a fair bit (most recent build was the one called out of the frying pan on Strava). I also mallards, dowie's and Staunton etc, but tend to avoid mallards in the wet to avoid chewing the loamier tracks up.

For me I really enjoy a Mary/dhr combo all year round. The trick imo is a supergravity/double down casing as you can run very low pressures without feeling too squirmy.

I find the fod mud and roots to be pretty grippy all things considered, so I can avoid the terrible rolling of double spikes. Somewhere like smilog or pontypool is s different story!

I've been running a pair of Michelin Wild Enduro 2.4's thru the autumn, really impressed with them for Tweed Valley off-piste. Replaced a MM front.

They are very grippy, but high wear if you're after a VFM tyre.

They are though draggy on anything non-steep and they're out of stock everywhere at the moment.

I have sort of settled on 2 pairs now. A dhf/aggressor for summer and trail centres. And wild enduros for everything else.

TBH i'm not sure i do justice to super hardcore gravity tyres (or riding !) so for me it's something middle of the road, something i can XC on, bike park on, trailcenter on and even ride to the local pub on. I'm not likely to swap between rides just because i'm going somewhere more or less technical.

With that in mind i've been running a Vigilante 2.5 on the front and usually a Trail Boss on the back or recently a Vittoria Goma (both in 2.35)

I do happen to do some pedally rides though at times, like Tommys Ride this weekend for fallen soldiers which was just under 50km, i ran the above for that and the day before used the same combo for Swinley Summit and the weekend before up at BPW. So i guess i don't need outright grip and performance and having a decent bit of both is better for me than having too much of one and not enough of the other. So a SG compound and grippy as hell that will ultimately be draggy everywhere, well that's just not for me.

While we've been debating this the cheaper Vigilante have been sold on Wiggle, so i'm now up in the air again 🙂 But there's no rush, i've still got 2 brand new tyres in the loft space, so not like i need them urgently.

I've just put a Hitchinson Griffus on the front of my hardtail in he place of a DHF3c Exo MaxTerra and I have to say it's bloody good.

I never got on with the DHF, probably lack of talent, and for the price and availability of a DHF Maxx Grip, the Huchinson was a fairly good buy as it was cheap and available.

The rolling is marginally slower than the DHF MT, but I find the grip so much better. But on corners where I would just not feel confident with the DHF, the Griffus just grabs and grabs.

Despite it being sold as a summer tyre, out in full on slop last week in Surrey it was very good, no clogging, gripped the roots well and allowed the Discetor on the rear to be more predictable in a slide or slip.

I am considering picking up the rear to see what it's like.

No issues setting it up for tubeless either.

Can't compare it to the MM as I was looking for a Trail casing one and couldn't find one for under £70 odd. You can get both Hutchinson's for £85-ish which in my opinion is a bargian.

I'm two rides in on a the 3C Max terra Shorty on the front. It's just replaced a DH. I normally don't bother swapping for a winter tyre only changing when it's worn. Last year was horrible I was slipping and sliding all over the place mincing was the order of the day. This year I was determined to embrace the conditions and looked for a more mud specific tyre.

In the end it came down to what was available and at a reasonable price.

About the Shorty, I read that because of the re-enforced casing you can run it at lower pressures enabling it to grip better over roots and rocks. I did alright last night.

so for me it’s something middle of the road, something i can XC on, bike park on, trailcenter on and even ride to the local pub on. I’m not likely to swap between rides just because i’m going somewhere more or less technical.

Then don't put a Mary on either end.
Horrible on anything hard though at least the Ginge is slightly softer in winter.
They are "magic" on anything soft..... but not IMHO an all rounder by any stretch.

I use a butcher/something (prob purgatory)?? for Swinley on the XC HT or DHF/DHR-2 (worn) on the aggressive HT
Rogate I usually use the DHF/DHR-2 (worn) on the aggressive HT or DHF/Hans (with inserts) on the EX511's if I'm casing the wooden features.

Took the MM on the STW because they were on a wheelset I didn't mind casing but these are usually just used on the Mega at Dyfi or Revs.

The Bird has the DHF/Hans (with inserts) usually and Ollie's mostly running a Assegai/Purgatory (with insert) combo though he's got a Hillbilly front wheel or borrows some of the other wheels when needed.

Accidentally took the HT with the MM on to Fleet and it was horrible.... it usually (DHF/DHR) feels faster rolling than the 4x bike but with the MM it was like pedalling through treacle just to clear the 1 dot line that usually doesn't require any pedalling at all.

Last year it was a mix of Hillbilly and Shorties, with DHR2 on the back.

Hillbilly was great in the loose/wet stuff, but the casing was far too flexible, so I had to run higher pressures than I would of liked. It skated on harder surfaces and didn't like roots at at all. Coupled to the compound being way too hard, is it really that difficult to reverse engineer the maxxis/schwable compound and construction?

Shorty was the better all round tyre, but still struggled on the harder surfaces still. Compound was good, I'd be running one this winter, but thought I'd give Schwable a go.

Magic mary, not ran on before, ran a muddy mary a few years back on the dh bike and watched them disentegrate, so steered clear since then.

Currently running a Mary up front, works well pretty much everywhere, apart from deep mud.
I'd like a slightly toothier version, but the dirty dan will be far too heavy to lug around on the front for trail riding.

Betty on the back (soft, supertrail), its basically a DHR2 double down. Was running an exo+ dhr2 before hand, but managed to put a pretty big hole on it jumping one of the jumps on Elephant man at FOD (slashed it on the take off!).

New shorty looks good, no idea when it will land, keen to give it a go, manybe even a cut down one in the back.