Mitas, you make good tires

I now have a little over 650 kilometers on the set of Mitas E07 Dakar tires that I had mounted on the rims of my V Strom 1000 last Wednesday.

The Dakar version of the E07 have a 4 ply side wall as opposed to the 3-ply of the standard version, making them substantially stiffer – and more resistant to sidewall tears and pinch flats. This is the main reason that I chose this particular version of the E07 tire, as I will be riding an 8000 kilometer Epic East Coast and Trans Lab Adventure in July, and the Trans Lab can be hard on tires – or so I have heard.

Up until this week, I have been riding on the stock Bridgestone Battlewing tires. All in all, the stock rubber are a satisfactory road tire. They provided good grip in hard cornering, and I was never afraid to lean the big girl over in the twisties. Wet traction was likewise satisfactory – though not as confidence inducing as on dry asphalt. They also managed most gravel and hard packed dirt fairly well, especially considering they are an 80 / 20 tire.

Where the stock rubber failed, of course, was mud. Big Ethel ended up laying on her side on several occasions after rolling around in the mud on various local adventures, and I came to expect that if we were going to be riding in any slick stuff, I was going to be picking her up.

For the last 2 days, I have been putting the Dakar’s through the paces.

I spent the first 100+ kilometers riding asphalt on a warm Thursday afternoon. The temperature was hovering around the 30 degree-celsius mark, and I knew that 100 kilometers of super-heated asphalt would be enough to scuff-in the new rubber.

I headed west from Ottawa on the 417 to Calabogie Road, and it was on that fine little piece of blacktop that I first got up the nerve to lean over on these almost-knobby tires.

So far, so good. Running at just a little over the speed limit, and accelerating fairly hard while leaned over coming out of some of the grin-inducing curves along the 508, I never once had a feeling of anything other than ‘hey, I like these tires’.

After about 106 kilometers of asphalt riding, I turned south onto highway 511 and made my way to the Barryvale road trail head of the K&P Trail. It was time to see what these tires were like in mild-to-medium off road conditions.

I am still smiling when I think about those first impressions.

I am not one to take it easy and pussy-foot around a new product, handling it with kid-gloves lest it disappoint too quickly. No, I like to see how my new purchase is going to perform – whatever the item.

And in this case – boy, do they perform.

Admittedly, I only have the stock rubber as a benchmark for a comparison. So it is no surprise that I really liked the way in which these new 50 / 50 tires handled the K&P Trail. But let me tell you – I think that my impressions are real-world accurate.

The K&P Trail is a re-purposed rail bed that is now a multi-use trail. As such, it has quite a bit of everything scattered along its length – from pretty deep water crossings to deep, loose gravel to thick mud to sand to slick mud to shale to river stone and everything in between. And these new tires handled all of it without so much as a single ‘holy-crap-that-was-close-butt-cheek- clenching’ moment.

I went through the water crossings with the confidence of my KLR riding buddies, flew through the loose gravel at the posted 50 kph speed limit, navigated the mud-holes without once getting squirrely, and had the time of my life.

This is how riding a big adventure bike is supposed to feel!

I exited the trail on Thursday at South Lavant Road and headed back towards Ottawa. By now I was so happy – and confident – with these new tires that I thought it was time to really push them on the asphalt – and S. Lavant road is just the place to do that. One of the more exhilarating stretches of asphalt in the Lanark region, this little road has some of the tightest hairpin-like twisties to be found, most of them starting on the uphill side of the many, many steep hills that pepper this road like some far-fetched creation of an old roller-coaster designer. I have no idea why S. Lavant road was engineered and laid out the way that it was-  but I sure am happy with the result.

I pushed Big Ethel, and the Mitas E07’s, as hard as I felt comfortable  - and safe – in doing. And just like the manner in which they left me smiling on the trail, the E07’s left me smiling on the asphalt.

I am not a track-day rider. I am not a 120 kp/h on the off-ramps rider. But I am an enthusiast. And I do seek a thrill.

I am pretty sure Big Ethel and I will be finding those thrills on Mitas E07 Dakar’s for quite some time.

Joe Enberg