Amplifya

Here are the photos taken from my 2011 trip to Taylor Park, Colorado. We spent 4 days riding trails.

In August 2011, I am returning to Taylor Park, Colorado to ride dirt bikes with a group of friends. This terrain is very rocky and can vary from just about every riding condition… asphalt, smooth dirt, gravel, big rocks, mud, water crossings, loose hard packed sand. You name it, we ride on it. We will ride 80 to 100 miles each day for a total of 4 days. Needless to say… tires get punished and pushed to their limit.

Bridgestone M403 & M404 Tires for Intermediate Terrain

Usually I will use Bridgestone M403 front and M404 rear tire on my 2008 KTM 250 XCFW. These last, bite good, get good traction, and overall I can predict what they are going to do. In Oklahoma we ride a lot of sand, mud and hard pack with the occasional trip to Crossbar Ranch in Davis for some rocks. These tires are great for this stuff. I would exactly say these are good motocross track tires. They are ok on a track, but not great.

I took these tires to Colorado 3 times in years past. Each time they have come back shredded but made the trip ok. Last year, they were destroyed. Coming back from the last trail on the last day, they were toast. I wouldn’t have rode them another mile. The knobbies were hanging off by a thread. At this point the wasted tires made riding on the last dirt road very slippery and unpredictable.

This year I am doing something complete different. I am going to use the Bridgestone’s brother set of tires for hard to intermediate terrain… the Bridgestone M603 front and the Bridgestone M604 rear tire. I am going to put these tires on right before I go and document the results.

 

New Tires Installed

I installed these myself, and these tires put up a fight. I suggest wearing gloves, using Armor All for lubricant, and using no less than 3 tire irons and a bead buddy. These were no fun. I have changed a few tires in the past and watched several pros on YouTube videos. Yikes.

The trip went well. Had lots of fun. My bike jetting was way off, but still all in all, a great trip. So the wear and tear on these tires went like this…

 

Day 1

72 miles – Union park, slaughter house trail, Cumberland pass, Tarzan mountain, Alpine tunnel, Hancock pass, st Elmos, tincup pass, mirror lake, tin cup, Taylor park.

 

Day 2

78 miles – dirt roads, Mount Tipton trail, Aspen Ski Lodge, Taylor Road trail, dirt roads back to Taylor Park

 

Day 3

87 miles – fossil ridge, McIntyre gulch, willow creek, Ohio city, pitkin, Cumberland pass, timberline, Taylor road.

 

Day 4

61 miles – Taylor road, lily pond trail, Italian creek road, American flag mountain, dorchester trail, Taylor road, Texas creek

Pros:

After a total mileage of 298, I have to say I was impressed with these tires. They held up to some brutal terrain. The traction on these were amazing. Actually more traction than I was used to. We rode everything… single track, roads, mud, rocks, creeks, etc. These tires did extremely well in all of it. You can Google/YouTube any of the trails mentioned to see video footage of the terrain.

Cons:

I would say that the only place these tires probably wouldn’t do great is in a lot of deep mud. They were a little slippery at times in mud, but held great on wet roots. These tires may be a little heavier than motocross tires. They were also not easy to mount.

All in all I will consider these tires for next years trip.