All weather tyre advice

evening all, i have just purchased a GF tassajara which comes with
Bontrager Jones XR tyres at mo. now ive read these are pretty much pointless in wet muddy conditions so can anyone give some advice as to what tyres are decent ones for mud and wet mud seeing as its the uk and wet season?

im just getting into mtb and dont wanna break the bank on tyres just yet,!!

cheers guys

It’s almost impossible to recommend tyres over the net TBH. Where do you ride? What’s the ground like? Muddy? Gravelly? Rocky? Plus there are very few good “all round tyres”. Having said that, you’d probably not go too wrong with any of the following:

Maxxis High Rollers, Continental Verticals, Panaracer Cinders. You can get all of these in a decent range of sizes for not much cash at all, and they’ll all be OK

cool well i appreciate your comment as yes, each ride may well be different, both weather and surface. id say majority is going to be muddy trails over the Midlands way, im local to clent etc so id say that will be my early stomping ground.

ive just heard bad things about the tyres being slippy as ice on anything but gravel or tarmac, so am worried that most of my rides to start will be muddy and hilly areas

Give them a go first before splashing out for new tyres. You can find bad reviews of just about any cycling products if you look hard enough for it. You never know, they could be just fine.

Normally I don’t bother changing tyres for the seasons. However I bought some Trailrakers for SITS int eh summer. I put them on the other week and although they’re not very fat, they do help, although for out and out mud they’re not great, Bonty mud ones (don’t recall which ones) are better, although the trailrakers do seem a good compromise for winter / spring riding

Bontys are a good allrounder, don’t discount them, I have a few riding mates who swear by them as a year round tyre. Magazine reviews are often biased to the ‘latest must have’ type products, best to see for yourself.

Ride em for a month or two and then decide where to splash your cash.

The Bonty Jones XR are a good spring/summer tyre, I run them as my XC tyre of choice from about April to October generally.

For a mud tyre that works well even if it’s not 100% muddy, go for the Bonty Mud X. They’re superb!

Or if you want a winter conditions tyre that’s a bit more versatile than the Mud X, then go for a 2.2″ Bonty ACX. They’re similar to the Mud, but with slightly shallower knobbles, and a slightly wider profile, making them better suited to riding when it’s not totally muddy, but still not bone dry.

mboy; agreed

Maxxis High Rollers.

I always espoused o e tyre for all conditions but have succumed to a two tyre strategy now, Michelin xcr mud andjust bought some vredestein killer bees for all other conditions

If you don’t want to break the bank like you say how about a WTB Velocirator Race Front from ChainReaction for £19.99 and a WTB Moto Raptor Race for the Rear from JE James for £16.63. Both’ll be free delivery so just over £35 for a pair of clever dual compound light folding tyres is pretty good. (Ignore the front being 2.1 and rear saying 2.14, they’re the same, plus WTB come up a larger than some for their size so they’re not totally skinny).
(This is what I’m running in these conditions, I have a more draggy Velociraptor Rear too which I bung on now and again, bit more traction and better sideways grip too).
In Summer you might enjoy the speed of your Bontragers though (I had them come with a Trek and as soon as it was a little muddy they showed themselves to be not up to the job, that was my experience).
I’d suggest some other tyres too including some of those on here… Nevegals, High Rollers, Schwalbe combinations… but these WTBs would give you great price/performance for midlands trails and woods.

Maxxis Medusas can also be bought for reasonable money (about £15, I think) and are a decent mud tyre, pretty fast rolling too.

Edit: I will add the Bonty XRs won’t be that slippy on muddy terrain, they actually have decent grip – they just get clogged quick as the knobbles are tightly spaced. Try em first, I say.

ride what you have concentrate on fitness and technique (so many things to learn) dont worry,read less ride more! enjoy, save money for when you break something or disc pads as you will probably go through a lot of these to start with

I find that ‘all rounder’ tyres are good in most conditions until you reach the extremes of those conditions. If you are happy changing your tyres with the seasons then I’d go down the mud specific tyre route. Panaracer trailrakers 1.8’s are excellent mud tyres and stick well to wet rocks. On the other hand a decent set of all rounder tyres can see you through the year with reasonable performance. Panaracer fire XC and cinder tyres are good in most conditions. I’m running kenda nevegal rear and blue groove front and they are good on most surfaces. I’d run some decent all rounder tyres and have a set of mud tyres in the shed incase the ground gets really bad.

I echo comments above; try the Bonty’s and save your cash. I have Bonty ACX which never fail to amaze me with how grippy they are, but are light and fast rolling too. When it gets really muddy I put on some Panaracer Trailrakers which are brill for when everyone else is slippin’ and slidin’

Don’t change tyres without trying them! You might think they’re just fine, despite what you’ve read.

Tyre pressure makes much more difference than tyre choice – I reckon about three quarters of people coming to see us for skills training have way too much air in. 30-35psi as a rough guide, even lower if you dare. So it feels like an orange, not an apple.