The tire features aggressive profile and excellent rolling speed with a gold colored sidewall. This tire also has the usually feature of being made from mixture of two different materials, silica and rubber. The concept behind this mixture of compounds is that the tire has greater flexibility in the sidewalls and in the knobs, at the same time permitting the rubber to be made of a harder reinforced rubber composition.
Hutchinson adds another twist to this tire by using a special process to mixing the compounds, which results in a better blend of the materials. Hutchinson calls it the "4 Extrusion Process".
After 3 months of use over a variety terrain I have the following to report, the tires have preformed well but do have some issues. The amount of air pressure in the tire is critical to how well they will perform. The tire is in fact pressure sensitive to a fault. Hutchinson recommends them for wet and muddy terrain; I would have to say they are right, as long as the tire pressure is just right and you can get it just right but the tire pressure that was just right on a wet, soft packed trail is going to be very wrong on a dry trail.
The tire performs a bit fast on hard packed or dry trails. On a fast paced dry trail the tire gives you the feeling that it's going to let go of the trail and send you dirt packing with your grill. Not a good feeling. As I said, it gives you the feeling that its traction is in question but I have not gone down. A lot of this touchy, feel traction issue is solved by tweaking the air pressure up or down depending on trail conditions. My solution was to set the tires up on to perform there best on a dry trail and leave them at that pressure regardless of the trail conditions. In this way I've learned what to expect from them in the mud and I can say they still perform well I the wet. The other thing to remember is that these tires really fast on hard packed surfaces and this may contribute to that slipper feeling the tires can have.
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