The AC10 is about as aggressive as you could get with a dual sport tire. We have tested these out on a DR-Z400 to see how they perform. This tire has been designed for guys that are dirt bike riders who hit the road every once in a while. The appearance of the tire is the first clue for how aggressive it is as well as the sizes it comes in. It only is available in 8121 front and then to 18 inch rear tire sizes.
We took them on a 1,200 mile adventure journey through the Nevada desert road to see how they held up and to see how they perform. They did great in the slower stuff, into the mud and soft dirt, and it did awesome on the high speed too. We hit a lot of high speed dirt roads so the front end being a narrower tire it felt a little sketchy. This leads to the conclusion that the front tire was not necessarily intended for those high speeds.
As far as it goes on the rear tire we started out with a 16 millimeter knob. After 1,200 miles, the tire had about 8 millimeters left so we know it is only going to last about 2,000 miles which is to be expected with an off-road knobby tire. Michelin used a softer rubber compound on this tire which is pretty typical in off-road tires. In matter of wear, it has wore really evenly and it hasn’t chunked all of it so that softer rubber compound is going to grip the rocks better and it prevents the knobs from cracking or breaking off. That is excellent for performance. However durability is going to undergo so the tire is going to wear a bit more quickly.
Other thing that stands out at Michelin is that they made both the front and rear tire non directional that suggests you could run it in either direction. The reason for that is that when you wear the tire down a little bit, you can take it off, remount it the other direction so you could have that nice sharp edge on the other side of the tire. However we believe that is going to be a wonderful tire to perform good off road.