Horizons Unlimited - The HUBB - Tires in Central/South America

My wife and I are just finishing a 6 month tour of Mexico & Central America.

We left home on Continental TKC-80, which we normally use, but had trouble finding TKC-80 when we needed to replace them. We went with Metzler Sahara Enduro III and found them to be pretty good all round. They also seemed to wear slightly better than the TKC-80.

You can find lots of dirt roads in Mexico & Central America but there are also many small, paved backroads to explore. We found that in the end, we likely rode 85-90% pavement.

The TCK-80 would be better in deep mud but the Metzler Sahara Enduro III seemed to do everything else well enough.
Our blog is at Backroad Explorers.ca

Quote:

Originally Posted by criboun (Post 233533)

I'd be grateful for some local advice (local being for Mexico and Central America!) I'm riding down from San Diego to Panama from April '09 (taking about 6 months) and I don't know what type of tyres to go for, as I have not been to the area before.

I hope to be riding a mixture of paved and dirt roads but don't really know how bad and how frequent the dirt roads generally are thus how knobbly my tyres should be. I'm looking at the following for my XL650 Transalp and would be grateful for any advice.

Do you think I should be going for at what they call "Enduro Street" or "Enduro On/Off" types?

Enduro Street being tyres such as:
Metzeler Tourance / Enduro
Pirelli MT60 / MT80
Dunlop 607
Michelin Sirac
Enduro On/Off being tyres such as:
CONTINENTAL TKC80
Metzeler MCE Karoo
Metzeler MCE Six Days
Pirelli MT70
Michelin T63

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Ollie

Greasy Sprocket