Maxxis recently held their annual “Summit” in the mountains of Northern Georgia at the Mulberry Gap Mountain Bike Resort. Maxxis had some exciting news to announce on the fat bike tire front so my podcasting partner Andy and I got to head down and get the skinny on their fat. There will be a following article getting more into the summit and some of the other plus tire tech but the Moosetrak was just too exciting not to post individually about it.
The Studs are Now at Maxxis:
Maxxis has gone all in on studded tires. They have gone from not having any studded bike tires in their line but will be offering three different studded tires sometime in the fall of 2017. There is a 700×40 Max Ice, 29×2.1 Matterhorn and the tire that got me all excited, the 26×4.8” Moosetrak.
While the two skinny tires are cool, the star of the show is definitely the bodaciously bountiful bad boy on the right. It is designed to run 258 aluminum carbide tipped studs. It purportedly runs 124mm (4.88”) wide on 100mm rims but I wasn’t able to verify that because it was mounted on a 70ish mm rim. The casing of the display model was 120tpi and tubeless ready.
The tread pattern is designed to offer low rolling resistance in hard pack conditions with a fairly continuous center row of knobs and to concentrate more pressure on the studded knobs to increase the biting traction of the studs. In looser conditions the lower “bridging knobs between the full height knobs should get engaged and help with traction. There isn’t heavy use of siping but there are a lot of edges, steps and chamfers to increase surface area interacting with the snow and provide more biting edges for traction. Side knobs looked substantial, well supported and plentiful but not any taller than the higher knobs in the middle of the tread. I wasn’t able to get a straight answer on the use of texture on the casing. The studs were not placed in the center row nor the outermost side knobs. All of the studs are in the two intermediate rows of knobs with twice as many knobs in the outer intermediate knob row which is very similar to the Dillinger 5 and Snow Avalanche.
Details beyond that were still largely up in the air. They are hoping to offer another size but are still collecting info to determine exactly what size that should be. They are nailing down the specs on their studs. The current version looks very similar to 45NRTH concave studs but they are experimenting with a slightly longer design. Pricing is also yet to be determined.
We were not able to ride the Moosetrak during the event which is a bummer but I have to say that we would have been hard pressed to glean anything from riding them on the Georgia dirt and rocks. That leaves us to speculate on how they may perform compared to all the studded tires that we tested this winter. The overall design looks similar (once again) to the Dillingers and Snow Avalanche which is a good thing because both of those tires are great allrounders.
I really look forward to getting on a pair of these next season and putting them through their paces!
Another good looking studded option. Why do tire designers put textured ‘grip’ on snow tire casings? All I’ve ever seen it do is clog up with snow (looking at you Vee Snowshoe).