Metzeler Karoo Street tyres have been gracing both ends of the redoubtable Freewind for a year or so now. During which time they have coped with all manner of crap, in the most literal sense. Let me explain.
I spend most of my time in the wilds of West Dorset, and last winter was the wettest on record. Roads subsided, flooding was everywhere; and since I live off road (accessed either by a track or across a field), it’s fair to say that any motorcycling undertaken outside high summer is best described as challenging. The Freewind does the hack duty each winter, and therefore had to meet the mud and greensand challenge thrown up – along with the local road – by the climate. I had to find tyres that could handle supposed tarmac surfaces plus the off road elements. I opted to try the Karoos, but my first thought was that I’d actually made a mistake.
I had been looking at the new(ish) Karoo 4 rubber, which a has a more off piste tread pattern than the Streets. However, the 650 ended up shod with the latter by mistake – my bad – and at first glance looked questionable contenders for the context previously described . Appearances, however, can be very misleading.
Bikerglory has been associated with Metzeler / Pirelli for some years now, and while it’s true that some rubber suits some bikes better than others, these days it is very rare for any major manufacturer to market tyres which are frankly not fit for purpose – as older readers will recall, this has emphatically not always been the case. However, previous Metzeler experience boded well for the Streets, and I was happy to fit them – albeit with fingers crossed when we left the road.
Since then, they’ve experienced Spanish mountain tracks, been two up off tarmac in a variety of conditions, and spent an awful lot of time on road in the wet, where they never gave a moment’s pause for thought. In the dry I rate them as excellent general purpose road tyres, turning in smartly while offering as much stability as Metzeler’s own Next Tourance 2s , although the latter may offer a little more grip when lean angle starts to get interesting. Off road, they feel superior to the Next 2s – remember, both are marketed as ‘adventure’ tyres, which is pretty much equivalent to ‘dual sport’. Apparently no one says ‘sports tourer’ anymore, but maybe that’s how to think of Next 2s, whose application is overwhelmingly tarmac based. The Streets feel more genuinely dual purpose.
I have to say that their trail and field capability has surprised me, and bear in mind that we’re not talking Salisbury Plain or quickish fire roads – we’re talking a mess. In over a year’s riding, the only surfaces where they skipped a beat was on sodden grass and once in the mud, where their performance was close to a more off road biased tyre, like Brigestones’s AX41. Like I say, a big surprise.
Despite encountering plenty of sharp edged stone, they’ve also remained puncture free – luck obviously plays a big part in that, but the construction seems robust enough to handle pretty much everything you would expect it to. The bottom line is, unless you are regularly going to be getting involved with sand, mud or the more hardcore aspects of off road life, these tyres are just fine. One thing to bear in mind is that they have spent their life to date on a machine with around 50 bhp, and while obviously rated to cope with a lot more power, it’s difficult to say to what end – if any – their performance might be effected. Different tyres suit different bikes and different riders: there are no hard and fast parameters. That disclaimer out of the way, if you venture off road from time to time while enjoying yourself on the black stuff, you could do a lot worse than the Karoos: for that kind of mixed application, I’d recommended them.