The new TrailSmart from Dunlop is aimed squarely at adventure bike riders who spend most of their time on the road, but want to know they can handle a little light trail work if necessary.
Taking over from the Trailmax TR91, the tyre was launched earlier on this year near Marbella, Spain, with a number of journalists from around the world in attendance, eager to try them out.
Dunlop wanted to increase the longevity of their adventure tyre, without loosing the sporting prowess that was so well received when the TR91 came to the market back in 2011. A revised tread pattern reduces the number of grooves on the shoulder, and increases their frequency in the middle of the tyre to increase grip on loose surfaces and evacuate more water from around the contact patch in wet weather.
The compound has also been modified, and is now very similar to that used in the Sportmax RoadSmart II.
One journalist at the launch was Tony Hoare of Motorcycle News, who have his opinions on the tyre in their 6th May tyre special:
“The launch route near Marbella in Spain was the ideal place to put a tyre like this to the test, providing a hard day’s riding that combined sweeping roads, twisty bends and around 40km of unmade roads.
Initial impressions were that Dunlop had maintained the old tyres impressive performance in the dry (there was no rain in whic to try them). Riding a Yamaha XTZ1200 Super Tenere, we found the TrailSmarts to be confident-handling tyres which gave a consistent feel across a wide variety of lean angles and high levels of grip on the warm roads.
They were perhaps not the fastest steering of adventure tyres (it would take back to back testing to be sure), but they allowed very enjoyable riding.
Dunlop are open about the fact the TrailSmarts are predominantly for road riders, saying they will be used 90% on road, with only 10% of them going off the paved stuff. But they were proud of the old TR91’s perofrmance off-road, which they say was assisted by the fact the grooves in the tread pattern intersected to give harder bite on dirt. And they are confident they have kept that performance on the TrailSmart.
This explains the longer than usual stretches of off-road terrain on the launch. We’re talking unmade roads rather than full on muddy trails, where a rider would be much better served on knobbly tyres. But on this light terrain, the TrailSmarts provided reassurance and an enjoyable ride.
The main factory Dunlop have worked to improve – longevity – is impossible to assess in the space of a day’s riding. It will take longer to test to investigate that, and we will fit a pair of TrailSmarts to one of our 2015 long-term test bikes to evaluate durability.”
See the full range of TrailSmart sizes here, all available to the UK trade from Cambrian Tyres as soon as they arrive with Dunlop in the UK.
