Mountain bike mud tyres - everything you need to know
The mountain bike tyre is the most important component of your bike as it communicates directly with the terrain. As we move into the winter months, it’s wise to take a look at your tyres and potentially change them for something more suitable to achieve more grip and have an easier time out in the mud. However, there are several caveats, as you will need to strike the right balance when it comes to your winter MTB tyre choice.
- Five tips to make winter cycling easier
- How to set up your mountain bike for winter
- Best mountain bike tyres 2023
What do I need to look for in a winter MTB tyre?
Winter and wet weather require tyres with vastly different attributes to those that are better suited to summer conditions. Generally, in the winter trails get wetter and softer so riders will need tyres with different tread patterns to suit these surfaces.
If you look at a brand’s range of tread patterns, it will start with semi-slick tyres with minimal tread, through to cross country, trail enduro/downhill. With mud tyres, the tread will get taller, and spikier and the knobs will be spaced further apart. For a winter tyre to provide more grip in wet conditions, taller knobs help dig into the trail, through the soft surface into the harder stuff underneath. Tyres suitable for winter riding also tend to sit on a wheel with a squarer profile, with its shoulder knobs being taller still to bite when riding off-camber sections.
But it’s not all about tread depth or knob height, however, because if the knobs are packed too closely together, mud will collect and cling between them. So companies space the pattern out wider to help mud clear as the tyre is rotating allowing for optimal traction.
Mud-specific tyres, often referred to as mud spikes, take knob height to another level to provide enough rubber to bite deep into the slop of overridden and exceptionally wet trails.
It’s not all about the mud spike
When riders think of winter tyres, the Maxxis Wet Scream and Continental Hydrotal will immediately come to mind. However, these tyres are excellent in a limited scenario – wet downhill racing.
During a downhill race, hundreds of riders take on the same course during a day and when it’s wet, that churns up the trail’s surface, making it sloppy and grip incredibly hard to come by. As more riders tackle this course, it gets even worse, take Danny Hart’s win at 2011 World Championship win at Champery for example. These tyres are designed to work in the filthiest of conditions.
But to us non-downhill racing amateurs, full-on mud spike tyres are too much. They don’t roll very well, making peddling tougher than it needs to be, and unless you’re riding in 2011 Champery-like slop, you’ll spend a lot of time riding on the tips of a mud spike’s taller knobs, and not benefitting from the enhanced grip. And through sections of trail that are harder, the knobs can fold over themselves, resulting in very poor handling.
That’s where tyres such as Maxxis’ Shorty come in, which is a Wet Scream (although tweaked a little more) but with shorter knobs, hence the name. This tyre then works better in a greater range of conditions, where serious mud and drier, harder sections come into play with some riders even turning to the tyre for deep and dry dust.
Tyres like the Shorty, Schwalbe’s Magic Mary, Continental’s Argotal and WTB’s Verdict all provide a great middle ground between a mud spike and an all-round tyre. These provide great grip in very wet conditions, whilst being reliable over hard sections of trail, and even in the summer. Where tyres are very expensive, rubber such as this is an excellent choice for year-round riding.
Is wider better in the wet?
This is where an argument for a narrower tyre comes into play and is part of the reason why plus tyres struggled to take off. A fatter 2.6in tyre will skate over patches of thick mud, instead of cutting through and biting into the harder surface underneath. As such, the grip is minimised.
That’s why tyres such as the Maxxis Shorty are only available in 2.4in width, allowing the tyre to cut through soft bits of mud and grip.
Is a softer rubber compound better for winter MTB?
Over hard surfaces, a soft rubber compound produces more chemical grip, whereas the tread pattern is responsible for mechanical grip. On hard surfaces like rocks, roots and harder mud a soft rubber compound is excellent as it increases grip at the expense of wear and rolling resistance.
However, there is an argument that a harder compound works better when dealing with consistently soft trails. That’s because a firmer knob may be better suited to digging through soft mud to get to the harder stuff underneath as it won’t unnecessarily deform as it gets there.
Almost all tyres on the market blend their rubber compounds with soft rubber at the very outside which is then supported by a firmer compound. This helps the knobs retain core strength, stopping them from bending too much under load, while still providing the chemical grip that comes as a result of using a soft compound.