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Product Review
Intense Tires Intruder
June 25, 2003
Derin Stockton's Intense Tire factory team had a secret weapon up their sleeves this week at the 2 muddiest NCS rounds in recent memory, the intruder. An adverse condition tire (read: ugly soupy mud and rocks) that hooks up almost as well in the dry as it does in the wet.
Mud tires are an enigma. Some rider hate them, some love them. Some work, some don't work. Some are hard, some are soft. Some are wide, some are narrow. Intense seems to have stumbled upon the best combination of all of the above factors to create what may be the best mud tire on the market
Click for fullsize image.
The intruder comes in 2.35", 2.5" and 2.7" sizes and rails. We put these tires to the test at the Mt Tremblant canada cup race as well as the West Virginia and Mt Snow NCS rounds. The latter 2 races were probablyt he 2 muddiest events I have been to in a long time.
The tall, stiff knobs on the intruder hook up extremely well in loamy soil and thick peanut buttery mud. The spacing is far enough apart that they clean extremely well when they get rolling, but pack in the the thick stuff when the going gets slow. This is to be expected (especially in the case of our 2.7"/2.5" combo). The intruder seemed to stick like glue to whatever we could throw at it. The only time it felt a slightly sketchy was on slick mud covered rocks, even then however the breakaway point was predictable and easy to adapt to.
How does it roll? Well as expected, a 2.7" 1655 gram mud tire isn't going to roll like a semi slick. With decent pressure in it (18psi front, 24 psi rear), the tire seemed to bleed speed fairly quickly on the flats, but not to the point of bogging down. The Intruder is a great tire for a course that includes muddy wooded sections as well as high speed rocky open sections (a la Mt Snow). The compound is a 50 durometer FRO (for race only) intense concoction that includes the sherman tank like 4 ply sidewalls intense is reknowned for.
Click for fullsize image.
How successful were these tires on the weekend? The intense tires support truck completely sold out of intruders in West Virginia, and almost every sponsored rider was astride them (including the entire Transcend DH team). Everyone wanted to be on Intruders to go play in the mud it seems...
Next time you are in need of a mud tire that won't get balled up in deep mud, is predictable on wet rocks and rolls decently fast down the fall line, we highly recommend the Intruder.
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