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The rock crawling competitions have raised the extreme four-wheeling bar. Parts that used to work fine on your hardest trails now don't work well at all, as the routes and challenges have gone extreme. This is especially noticeable where tires are concerned. Tough, flexible tires that grip well are needed to traverse the toughest trails. The old tires don't cut it, anymore.
A few tire companies are working hard to develop tires that, while their street performance may be impaired, work great in the toughest backcountry environments. One of these is Mickey Thompson Tires.
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Mickey Thompson has been around for a long time. Their "Baja Belted" line of radical-looking tires has been popular in the desert and on the show floor for years. The tires look great and work well on the street and dirt (at least as well as other tires). Mickey Thompson's recent introduction of the Claw line of tires showed them that tires that did everything well (theirs, AND everyone else's) might slip a bit on the rocks when in the competitions. With no intention of changing the current line of great all-around tires, the engineers went to work to develop Claws that work under the most extreme backcountry conditions.
Mickey Thompson tires have been known as "Baja Belted" tires for years, as they incorporated belts running around the circumference of the tire to stabilize the tread. This works great on the street and in some off-road applications, especially where there might be some speed involved. The belts help to keep the tread from squirming around, which makes the tire feel squirrelly. At slow speeds, the belts actually keep the tires from wrapping around obstacles as much as they would if the belts weren't there. So, Mickey Thompson removed the belts!
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