Calling a tyre the Trailrider makes life easy – it’s for trailbikes, right? Well, no.
Avon’s Trailrider tyres are only recommended for 10 per cent off-road use, 90 per cent on-road, so I can only guess trail bikes are called dual-purpose or adventure or something other than trail bikes in the UK these days, where Avon hails from.
Either that or there are so few trails left in the UK that 10/90 is the right split for trail bikes…
Anyway, for Australia, you can fit Avon Trailriders on anything from a big-bore Adventure machine to tourers, nakeds, sportsbikes and, of course, trailbikes.
It comes down to usage – if you’ve got an adventure or trail bike which you ride to work on, go road touring with your mates on road bikes or bought the wrong bike and never get the tyres dirty, the Trailriders will suit you well. They provide good grip in the dry and wet conditions and should last, too.
But we didn’t do that, we put Trailriders on a fully-faired road bike.
Most Australians who decide a dirt road isn’t something to be feared buy adventure bikes these days, then ride them piddlingly-slow. It’s because they’ve ridden a road bike on gravel with too much air in the tyres and had about as much feel as the first time they went ice skating.
A road bike with a set of Avon Trailriders will feel much, much better on gravel than the same bike with road tyres – for the video I took the bike down a local fire trail and was surprised at how easily the little FZ coped.
With so much of Australia connected by gravel and dirt roads, with lots of bitumen roads having sections of gravel, with so many good tourist spots only able to be accessed by an unsealed surface, Avon Trailriders should be seen on lots and lots of bikes – try a set and see if you can go the extra (dirty) mile…