Our go-to commuter for little jobs in and around the city is the TVS Radeon. It joined our long-term fleet in 2020 and has since logged just 8600km with nearly exclusive city rides, as it spent a significant portion of 2021 lying in the garage, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic.
I was given the responsibility of being its caretaker eight months ago and its stock rubber, the TVS DuraGrip tyres, started to show their age with many small cracks on the surface. Enter the TVS EuroGrip DuraPro tyres. We slapped them on, and here’s a review after one month in the saddle.
TVS has given the DuraPro tyres medium sized tread blocks on the centre and rounded edges that give the motorcycle a good Jekyll and Hyde personality. I fit these tyres to the Radeon in the middle of the monsoon and that gave me a chance to test their wetweather performance. Right off the starter blocks, I felt much more confident riding it in the rains. The Radeon isn’t a 200bhp maniac which lets its rear loose, every time you give it the beans, but with the DuraPros I observed that it gets off the line much better, giving me more confidence to launch harder. But it’s the braking performance that has improved the most noticeably. Braking always takes a hit in the wet and the tyre has to work extra hard to slow down the motorcycle, especially during a panic braking situation. The DuraPros do a very good job of throwing out water, due to their sine wave pattern and that results in a shorter braking distance.
The Radeon’s ride quality remains unaffected by the DuraPro’s bolder blocks. It continues to ride as well as before, in fact even better on loose surfaces due to the slight additional thickness. The Radeon is by no means a corner carver, but it is arguably the sportiest bike in its class. Its sweet sounding exhaust note especially, urges you to ride it quite enthusiastically and because of its light weight, it is a riot to throw around. Because of their rounded sides, the DuraPros let you hold a better line in the corners. And they also make the motorcycle feel stable at high speeds. I would definitely recommend the TVS DuraPro TL. It’s a good all-weather tyre and should help improve the performance of your bike in damp conditions without hampering its ride quality.