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by Bryan Irons
When you can flop your ugly meat hooks around an entire tread block and get a decent grip, you know the tire you’re hanging onto isn’t meant for the street. This seems to be the first thing people do to the set of 37X13.5x17LT tires hanging off the corners of our rig before the obvious question “what are they like on the street?” comes out.
It would be a crying shame to burn a set of these awe inspiring tires out on pavement, but we daily drive these for a few weeks just to be able to let you know. For a tire designed for dirt we were quite surprised to see weighted packages on the inside of the tires as proof of them being balanced from the factory. The tough as nails bias ply constructed rubber rolled pretty smooth once you got a few miles of heat into them every morning as the flat spotting was very noticeable. Lug slap under 50 kmh and a twin engine aircraft howl was not a shocker and were by far the loudest tire we have tested in some time.
With a tire of this nature, you really need a good 500km to break them in and get the sidewalls to loosen up a bit. Even so, we found our sweet spot well below what we normally run to get the carcass to show a good bulge. This meant .5 psi in the snow and 2-3 psi for normal trails. At those pressures, rocks, dirt and deep snow were no match for the awesome traction the Rockers afforded. The massive sidewall treads and deep spacing between sidewall treads made traveling up the trails no problems. What little mud we ran across was easily handled.
So, who should have a set of Pitbull Rocker Bias tires? If you’re concerned about spilling your $9.50 morning mocha-chino-latte-double-shot-espresso like Editor Stanley, you may want to pass. If you have a reputation for killing tires and have a calling for hard-core full throttle attacks in the rocks or dirt without a need to squeeze 50,000k out of a tire; look into the Rockers, and BYO beadlocks!