Pirelli MT 43...Trials Tire the Final Chapter

Baja tire test

I have now totaled up approximately 4,000 miles on a couple of Pirelli MT 43 rear tires and have purchased a third. After having logged enough miles to give an objective rating to the MX43.com readers I will continue using the trials tire with the addition of the tubesaddle mentioned previously.

The tire wore extremely well even in rocks when used as a trail riding tire, I did not push it at race speeds because it was never meant for that purpose. I had no chunking of knobs and nice even wear with both tires. The first went approximately 1700 miles and the second one was pushed to 2150 miles as I had to get home from a multi day ride in Mexico. This included a fair amount of commuting (500 miles) on Mexican roadways as they are paving way too quickly for my taste. A word of advice, if you want to ride Baja the longer you wait the more pavement you will encounter.

As a recap, I did use a tubesaddle liner on this trip but ran it with the air pressure set at 12 psi instead of the 7 to 8 psi the manufacturer, James Curry, said would be no problem. I never had a pinch flat but did pick up a cactus thorn and had to do one flat repair on the trip. I was riding with a very large group of riders and several of them changed to new tires part way through the trip. But I didn’t want to be that guy that holds everyone up, you know with a pinch flat because I ran low air pressure for better traction. I will now begin testing the tubesaddle on my own with lower pressures and let you know how well it prevents pinch flats as I begin airing down bit by bit.

The Pirelli MT 43 performed very well in everything we encountered from hard to sand to rocks. I generally tried to go slightly slower than most of the other riders up the same climbs to test the tire without using momentum to climb things. I was impressed with its clawing action as long as you used a judicious throttle hand. I finally did notice one place the knobby tire provided an advantage. On steep descents I could feel the trials tire would skid slightly sooner when using the front brake hard and transferring the weight to the front of the bike. Nothing scary but it felt like a well worn rear tire in that instance. It was easy to control by using the rear brake a bit lighter once I felt it.

So just like in MMA fighting (mixed martial arts) we are about to begin round 3………ding, ding!

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