Dunlop D606 review: best road-legal knobby dirt bikes?︱Cross Training Enduro

Our Dunlop D606 review! Is this road legal knobby any good for dirt bikes? You have an enduro motorbike but you ride on roads out to the tracks. Welcome to Cross Training Enduro. So you want a knobby that will behave on the road and not wear out too quickly. Need hard enduro training? Work through our video lists.Or maybe you have modified an enduro motorbike for dual sport riding. In either case, viewers have often asked me "Is the Dunlop D606 is a good choice for road and dirt riding?" Years ago? Yes. Nowadays? Hard enduro techniques are covered in our training vids. There could be better options out there? A quick bit of history. I used the Dunlop D606 knobbies for years. I used to ride on the roads with my XR400, KLX650 and TE610 for an hour on to the tracks. And later on I adapted a WR450F and a Husaberg FE570 as lightweight adventure motorbikes. In all these cases, the Dunlop D606 did work well, if I accepted the inevitable compromises. But today we have such a wide range of tyres that many riders will probably find better options than this Dunlop D606 review. And frankly the D606 front is probably worth avoiding. More on that later. Dunlop claims the D606 is for 10% road riding and 90% off-road riding. Into enduro and dirt bikes? Check out our dirt bike videos. We would put the balance as 20% and 80%. We always found the D606 worked quite well on road surfaces. As usual, we have read dozens of owner reports about the D606 and we found some riders claimed the front tyre has very poor grip for road riding but we never encountered that. Wet roads? No problems but then we never push hard on wet roads. Road noise is what you would expect - pretty loud. Extreme enduro training vids are our focus. High tyre pressure reduces the noise slightly, but you will want earplugs on the highway! Off-road performance? There are definitely compromises compared to an enduro knobby. The less aggressive tread pattern won't be so good in mud and soft sand. The rubber compound is very hard so there tends to be less grip in slippery terrain. The tyre carcass is quite stiff so you need to run very low air pressures to get a decent footprint on the ground. Anyone into hard enduro will hate it. But for everyday dirt riding you may find the compromises are okay given the D606 has good road manners. The Dunlop D606 front tyre is not good though. Our dirt riding tips are great for developing your hard enduro skills. If you want extreme enduro training see our playlists of enduro skills to learn. It can feel quite sketchy off-road. And it tends to wear unevenly with road riding. A lot of adventure riders choose the Pirelli MT21 front knobby instead.Longevity of the front D606? Usually you can expect to use one front tyre to every two rear tyres. But due to uneven wear you may find the front D606 only lasts about 50% longer than the rear. Try our training vids for working on your extreme enduro techniques. The only way to get more life is choose the Pirelli MT21, avoid aggressive road cornering, and use high air pressures when road riding. Possibly the best option for the front tyre is simply to run with your favourite off-road knobby. If you aren't cornering or braking agressively on bitumen then front knobbies don't wear out quickly - assuming you have a light enduro motorbike. What else? There's the Mitas E09, Continental TKC80, Kenda Big Block, Metzeler Karoo, and Kenda Trackmaster 2 for starters. And of course the Tusk Dsport in north America. Do you have other suggestions for road-legal knobbies? As the motorbike's weight climbs above 136kg (200lb) you can get uneven wear using aggressive front knobbies for road riding. And the flexing knobs can be quite scary with aggressive cornering or braking. Similar budget tyres to the Dunlop D606? We already mentioned the Pirelli MT21. In the USA there is the Tusk Dsport which is extremely similar to the D606 in all respects but almost half the price.You lucky bastards. All the reviews indicate it's on par with the Dunlop knobbies so it appears to be a bargain. If anyone had trouble with the Tusk Dsport let us know in the comments. I started this review by asking if the Dunlop D606 was still a good choice for dirt riders who will be riding on the road as well. In the old days? Sure. But nowadays there's a wider range of knobbies designed to handle the road as well. For example, the Motoz Tractionator Desert which is rated 85% off-road and 15% road.The tour operator said they get really good mileage despite a fair bit of highway riding, and good traction in soft sand and dirt too. The Michelin Desert Race tyres. Bloody expensive but the same tyres are used by the KTM team at Dakar. #crosstrainingenduro #enduro #hardenduro #dunlopd606 Our website: https://sites.google.com/view/crosstr...