On test: Ritchey Motovader Pro tyres, May 29, 2005 Fat but versatile Matt Barr hits the dirt on some fat do-everything rubber from Ritchey. Ritchey Motovader Pro Tom Ritchey has been making tyres (or, as he'd say, tires) for a looong time. Despite this, they aren't necessarily one of the brands that would immediately spring to mind when considering some new rubber. A few years ago I had some Ritchey Z-Max tyres on the mountain bike, and despite performing very well in most conditions, they were a little bit narrow and the casings a little bit too lightweight for the type of riding I was doing (and the kind of rider I am!) When they wore out, they were replaced with whatever tyre was flavour of the month, and time moved on. The immediate question looking at the MotoVader 2.4, then, is, does the performance of Ritchey's lighter, more race-bred tyres, scale up to bigger tyre dimensions? Certainly first impressions were just that - that Ritchey had taken the proven "VFA" tread pattern and expanded it to fit a more chunky tyre. The MotoVaders we got to play with are the Pro version, which have a folding bead and use a soft compound rubber - what Ritchey calls 'Severe Conditions' rubber. Thankfully, the bead isn't one of those annoying, overly-tight, kinds that some other manufacturers love (and are cursed by anyone trying to fix a flat in the heat of the moment), so popping these tyres on and off was no drama. First ride was immediately after I threw them on the bike, and took them for a quick spin up and down the road. Road tyres these certainly aren't - they take a bit of mumbo to get up and rolling on tarmac. The knobs aren't particularly high, so I'm putting some of this road-reluctance to the soft compound rubber. Thankfully off road, where they belong, this isn't nearly so noticeable. The geology around Sydney means we have a choice of mountain biking terrain that encompasses sandstone, sand, and sandy sandstone - so thankfully, for the purposes of variety, I've had the opportunity to try the MotoVaders a little further from home, as well as on our local tracks. The tread On our specialty, solid sandstone, these tyres perform really well. Being 2.4in wide, they cope with impacts just fine, and I'm yet to suffer a pinch-flat from pounding into a rock edge with the MotoVaders. Riding on rock, the softer compound m,akies its presence felt, giving a noticeable bit of extra bite. This is particularly confidence-inspiring when riding some of the more technical descents and climbs. As things get a little more sandy, the Motovaders continue to work well, cornering with acceptable levels of sideways drift. Once thing I noticed was that they pick up a lot more grit than I'm used to. Maybe a front mudguard would come in handy... When cornering on more dusty tracks, with loose rocks, I found the front MotoVader didn't quite bite as much as I'm used to, occasionally pushing through corners. This is possibly partly down to my usual preference for a square profile front tyre though. One interesting thing to note here is that after a week or so, it was noticed that I running the front tyre backwards from the suggested direction (oops!). With it around the correct way, cornering seemed to improve for the most part. As for mud - well, we don't get to see a lot of that around Sydney, even when it does eventually rain. The few bits of mud I encountered, while slightly annoying, were hardly the kind that would challenge many tyres. Just by inspection the knobs aren't particularly deep, so won't penetrate through mud too much, but they are fairly well spaced, so one would imagine they wouldn't be completely useless. When I first got the MotoVaders, I was expecting that I'd just use them for playing around on more rocky tracks, and probably switch back to my regular tyres, or something a little lighter, for some of the endurance rides that I've been doing lately. It turns out that I haven't - at least on the front of the bike (the rear sometimes gets swapped out for something a little less knobby, in deference to the terrain and my lack of climbing speed). In the past few months, I've run the MotoVaders in a couple of eight-hour races (in a team of 2), and completed a 100km race. I hardly challenged the leaders, but we can't blame the tyres for that! Those that like to pigeonhole everything in the MTB world would put these in the "freeride" bracket, simply because they obviously aren't a cross-country racing tyre, and are probably a little too lightweight for full on downhill racing. To me, they fit really nicely into the "Going Riding(tm)" bracket - because that's just what they are good for. Typical retail price: US$40; Au$59.95 Weight: 800g Pros: Soft compound adds to grip; rolls well & reasonable weight for a largish tyre Cons: Soft compound reduces life; not enough bite in loose conditions/gravel/when the rider is crap More information: www.ritcheylogic.com Cyclingnews Rating: