Never before have a pair of tyres generated such interest as they did in the P&H Motorcycles workshop yesterday. If you’re into mountain biking then you’ll be well acquainted with the name Maxxis, generally speaking they make the best pushbike tyres money can buy. But they also make motorbike tyres and in recent months they have been thinking ‘out of the box’ and behold the Supermaxx Diamonds are born. A sport-touring tyre reported to give huge amounts of wet weather grip, strong dry-weather cornering good enough for enthusiastic track days and high mileage rates - sounds perfect doesn’t?
There seems to be a stigmatism around tyre brands that aren’t as well known as the big boys such as Bridgestone or Pirelli. My short, back of a fag packet survey proved that two in four of my mates wouldn’t consider buying Maxxis Motorbike tyres and when I asked why they couldn’t really give me a straight answer, basically reasoning that they just wouldn’t buy them because they didn’t think they could trust them.
Earlier in the year Mark Forsyth spent two days thrashing all sorts of bikes around the Portimao circuit all clad in the Supermaxx Diamonds and he survived, in fact you can check out the onboard video, he actually quite liked them and he wasn’t hanging about that’s for sure. You can also read his impressions of how the tyres fared on the road.
In the flesh they have an aggressive profile with a high middle and considerably slanting side. The distinctive tread pattern screams different and really draws a crowd. The point behind this pattern is to help keep heat on the sides of the tyre through what is essentially a hard all-round compound rubber. Because of the distinctive diamond and micropaw pattern the Supermaxx Diamonds are very efficient at cutting through and displacing water.
As a result the tyres make the bike very eager to turn and when banked over, even if you’re keen on the gas coming out of a bend, the rear will wriggle about. I’m learning to like this feeling because that wriggle doesn’t feel dangerous, more than anything it feels like you are getting some comprehensive feedback on exactly what the tyre is doing and when - if at all - its going to begin to slide.
You can expect to get between 5000 – 7000 miles out of the rear and approximately 10,000 miles from a front. At £170-£200 a pair (depending on your dealer), you can't go wrong right?
I'll get back to you on how they faired up over the coming months. Thanks to P&H in Crawley for fitting the tyres. They charge £18 fitting & Balancing per loose wheel and £29.80 per wheel for a ride-in, ride-out service.
