I took an official DS ride on the C858 tire today. Consisted of both dry and rain soaked pavement, sand, gravel, wet packy sand, rain slick rocks, "pudding" mud (ya know when a puddle just about dries up but has a little wetness to it still?), just plain nasty soup mud with large rocks protruding in places, tractor ruts in the soup mud, and nice hardpack.

On pavement very smooth ride, extremely quiet tire. So far it seems that it has good wet traction and provides a verbal cue if you push it too hard, it doesn't just break free. The rounded profile makes the bike have a quicker lean rate too it seems and requires less effort to push it over in the corners.

Offroad similar results, great braking strength and even locked is predictable. In the gravel it tracks good and has plenty of bite, same for the wet rocks. On the hardpack it bites hard and will make the front end light very easily. In the sand it has very good traction and doesn't wander like the 603 did. I was actually able to grab some throttle and ride through a quad berm on a nice right hand turn. The 603 would wander and either slide down or go up over the berm and I would end up washing out. The C858 holds a good line even under power. In the wet sand it hooks up great! The "pudding" mud its about the same as the 603 was in that if you crack on it it breaks free very easily but side to side it handles better. The are several places where I have to cross over a hump in the middle of the trail where this "pudding" mud is on both sides in a corner and while it does slide, it only sildes to the point of getting off the hump, once in the quad path again its stable.


Now for the best part, I had read in the other thread that it isn't a great mud tire so I didn't have high expectations but I was pleasantly surprised in the soupy stuff today. This section is where I dropped the bike last when I slid off a rock and my foot just sunk in the mud and filled a handguard with mud and it wasn't nearly as wet or nasty as it was today. The 603 would struggle with the muddy rock faces and it required momentum to get through and forget about changing your line as the front tire might bo but the back was not going to follow if there was a rut or rock in the path. The C858 literally tractored through it! Barely any wheelspin and it actually gripped the rock faces and I was able to change my line and drive up out of a tractor rut across a bunch of basketball sized jagged rocks covered with the nasty soupy mud. The front tire slipped going into the other side of the trail/rut and I had to stop. The 603 would require me to unweight the bike and push while slipping the clutch to get going and even then it would spin alot especially if I was up against a rock. This tire just plain gripped and pushed me through. Toward the end of the trail there is a mudhole that is above the rear axle with water and the bottom is the same slick mud. Again it just plowed through, however coming up I cracked on the throttle and as it hit the hard pack with "pudding" on it it did break free and from this spot it transitions right to wet sand and it just dug a trench and I took off. In fact I turned around and wet back through the hole 2 more times .


All in all for $46 I'm pretty darn happy with this tire. The TM2 isn't much more and would undoubtedly be a much better tire for the trails it doesn't suit my 15 mile road commute with the tall skinny ***** as I like to rip around with the "It's more fun to ride a slow bike fast than a fast bike slow" mindset.

 

Few pics just for kicks,

 

Sound good BUT, who is it that makes this tire. "C858" just doesn't ring a bell for me.

Randy

 

Cheng Shin, all of their tires (at least to my knowledge) are just numbered models no fancy names. They are pretty well priced and the tires I've used before were excellent on my 3-wheeler and 4 wheelers.

 

My Dad runs a set of C180's on his old honda. Good on the gravel and seems to be wearing well. Can't beat the price.

 

Nice tire - thanks for the pics, bryantjt. I always like seeing actual photos since sometimes the depictions of the tires on vendor web sites don't seem to quite capture what they are really like.

 

No Problem. I rode to work today and took the scenic route home through the above mentioned trail. Well it was considerably wetter today as it had rained pretty hard all day yesterday. This tire provides a good deal more offroad traction than the 603 did even when it was new. On the road however with that round profile I felt a bit foolish on the way to work as the wind blows you around quite a bit more I think. I literally could not get a steady line, I was constantly going back and forth between the cross breeze and the wake of the van in front of me. The worn down 603 kept the bike pretty stable while my body took the brunt of the buffeting but its just the oppsosite with the C858. I'm thinking with some miles it will calm down but being way upstate NY I'm not sure how many more miles I'll have to put on. My morning commute today was 39 degrees when I left however there was frost in places, and on the way home it was a scorching 61 degrees.

 

Maybe need to get you one of those wind shields like cwgoff did:



That thing is pretty sweet - I'm eyeing up one of those myself.

 

I thought about it but between a fleece neckwarmer and my heavy winter gloves it wasn't bad except the gloves are so thick that I couldn't get a good feel on the clutch or brakes. That, and my fingers still got cold, even though they are gloves meant for snowmobiling. They are plenty warm on the quad riding in the winter or even plowing all day but I don't get up to 65 then either.

 

Hi Bryan, I just ordered a set of those 858's. What about an up to date report? Do you still use those? Anyone else using these tires?