This is kind of an odd thread. It seems like a fairly concrete statement to say that a tire specifically designed for off road conditions is going to perform better than a tire that was designed to be a compromise between riding on and off road. I think some of the pushback comes from the way ballisticexchris makes blanket statements about the overall quality of marketed 50-50 tires like the E07 and K60, and statements about the kind of people who use them, insinuating that they're lazy and cheap as he did earlier in this post.
Not everyone rides a 600 pound street bike in deep mud, sand, slickrock, etc. Probably because most of us aren't masochists, and would prefer a tool better suited for those jobs, for much the same reason I don't put off-road tires on a Honda Civic and call it a truck. For a good many of us who ride a combination of pavement and off pavement (and not offroad or singletrack), and also tour long distances, something like a K60 or E07 (well, the old one at least) is an ideal choice. For me, the E07 was the perfect tire for the 5000 miles of highways from my house to Utah and back, and it was just as much an ideal choice for riding down sand, dirt and gravel roads like Shafer Trail. It was far better than a street tire for doing those sorts of tasks. And Shafer Trail is about as off pavement as I'd ever be likely to take my big blue supertanker. As far as riding a big knobby tire like a TKC80 across country, I guess that would be fine if I don't mind having to stop as soon as I hit Colorado just to change a tire.
Chris, you made the statement earlier in the thread about how riding conditions can change for the worse, and now your tires that were previously adequate no longer are adequate. That's true of EVERY tire you're ever going to tide. Knobbies aren't magic carpets, especially on a 600 pound bike. You could be riding down that trail on your TKC80's and still find that part of the trail that's impassable, because you've now exceeded the performance envelope of even those knobby tires that are perched under a big fat motorcycle. Do you now start referring to those tires as crap, because they reached their performance limit? In fact, the argument could easily be made that you chose the wrong bike for that excursion, not the wrong tire. I might even venture that you've fallen prey to the same sort of marketing forces that you deride for swaying people to buy the E07; that Yamaha has convinced you that what's essentially a heavyweight Universal Japanese Motorcycle is actually a great choice for taking these offroad excursions you favor. A lot of experienced dirt riders would say that your choice of bikes for that is just as ludicrous as someone else's choice of an E07 for a tire. The fact that some guys are virtuosos on an S10 while off road doesn't make it a good choice; you could stick me on a Kawasaki H2 and put me on a track, and Marc Marquez would still leave me in the dust riding a V-Strom.
It's obvious, Chris, you have an axe to grind about 50-50 tires; this isn't the first post that you've made about them, nor is it the first time you've called into question the decision making ability of guys who like them. One of your beefs seems to be with the way they're marketed as a do anything tire, and I may have some disturbing news for you; marketing is ALL bullshit, including the marketing that classes our bikes as dual sports. Ax body spray doesn't make women tear their clothes off, either, as sad as that reality may be. An experienced rider can look at an E07 or K60 and know that it has limitations, in spite of marketing hype. And an inexperienced rider who is using a Super Tenere for his first off road journeys is already demonstrating an appalling lack of awareness that's far surpassed by what tire he's choosing, so I wouldn't necessarily use them as a focus of your argument.
There's no laziness on my part because I don't want to change a tire mid trip, especially not when there are several perfect tire choices that make this unnecessary. There's no delusion on my part because I've found that a tire like the old E07 perfectly matches up with the type of on and off pavement riding I do. There's no confusion on my part because I'm not swayed by some nonsensical marketing hype that a tire like a K60 will allow me to use a Super Tenere like a trials bike. For a lot of us, there is very much a place in the motorcycling world for tires like the Tractionators or K60s or E07s.
