Ficeca Accessories, who are the Australian distributor for Artrax Race Products, hooked us up with a set of thier new Artrax Mxtrax enduro tyres to use at the Thumb Pump 300 ATV Festival over Easter. We fitted a set of 22x7-10 fronts and 20x11-9 rears to the OMF bead locks on the DS450XMX that I was going to race and set out for a ride the weekend before easter to see how they would work out on the changing surface of the Thumb Pump track, after a quck test of the quad and setting some tyre pressures (8 Psi in the front and 7 in the rear for this track) it was ready to go for the Easter festival.

For the most part during the event the Mxtrax tyres felt like they hooked up well in the sandy sections and were very predictable sliding through the fast hardpacked sections, the central rib of knobs on the front tyre giving good feel through the bars on all kinds of terrain, a bit of a cross between an Maxxis iRazr and a Kenda Klaw in its characterisics in that it steers in loose terrain like an iRazr, cutting through the surface but, gives the confidence of the Klaw's rounder profile and side grip on harder surfaces.

The rear tyres work well with thier offset rows of knobs, mixing predictability in sliding with good grip in the sand, they are designed as an all round tyre (with E compliance in Europe for street use) so should doffer the same performance on wet ground (i'll let you know next time I find some....) especially with the tread running so far onto the side wall which will add to the handling over rutted tracks.

There is no PLY rating on these tyres like many of the others (they are of cross ply construction) but they have a load and speed rating of 50N which is about 200kg per tyre and a speed of 140kph which is part of their E standard compliance. By feel they are a bit lighter than a HD 6 Ply tyre like a Maxxis Razr 2 or ITP GNCC which probably puts them at an equivalent of a 4ply rating. All in all these seem to be a good value tyre, at $70 each for a front tyre and $80 each for a rear that makes a whole set only $300 which is quite a saving over the general pricing of tyres in this category. You can contact Ficeda Accessories via www.ficeda.com.au for stockists.