Hey everyone, believe it or not consider myself fortunate to have tried this Rekon Race
a couple of years back because you know what? This is a perfect trail tire for around here
I use this as a rear with more aggressive front. But if you were to buy one of these today you are
going to find that they exist in 2.4 WT or Wide Trail together with the sister ASPEN 2.4 WT.
These two are used today as cross country race tires let's check them out!
You know when Nino Schurter decided to go for wider tires I assume Maxxis just jumped up high
and they came up with these two. I believe that they are built on the same casing, they were
launched at the same time, they're both 2.4 WT or Wide Trail which require wider rims, anywhere
between 25 and 30 millimeter wide. Both of these tires use the dual compound they use the EXO
and they're tubeless ready. 120 TPI on both and semi-slick as mentioned here on the Rekon Race.
Interestingly the ASPEN says low profile cross country tire and not semi slick. These tires are
made in Taiwan and you can see the specifics of them: they are recommended for hard pack and lose
over hard. Cornering control on the Rekon Race is a two pointer and the ASPEN is considered to be
a better cornering tire so I would keep that in mind as I've never tried ASPEN up front.
And while ASPEN doesn't have a beefier cousin in the Maxxis lineup, Rekon Race is the racier
version of Rekon that exists in multiple sizes and triple compound as you see this Maxx Terra 2.4.
Something that doesn't exist on this Rekon, it doesn't have that yellow line that warns you about
tire clearance. "Not all cross-country race bikes will have ample tire clearance" so I'm wondering
who insisted on having that line on a set of tires from Maxxis. Anyhow if you want to see
installation instructions they're right here at the bottom scan that QR code it's going to take
you to the Maxxis site, but these tires are big volume tires and Maxxis has never been known for
their light tires, Schwalbe was good for that.This ASPEN 2.4 WT is supposed to be 721 grams,
and to my surprise is 712g. The Rekon Race is supposed to be 759 grams and it's coming
up to 761g, within 2 grams of the specified weight. And just for comparison this Rekon 2.4
is supposed to be 840 grams and here is 819 grams, so I'm quite impressed and happy with my findings,
great job Maxxis! The old 2.35 was supposed to be 710 grams, it was actually close to 750, that's
only about 10 grams difference from the 2.4, the new 2.4. But the big difference here is in the WT
or the Wide Trail casing and while the old Rekon is installed on this Stan's Arch MK3 so 26 mm ID
the new tires are going to get installed on Duke wheels so this is a 26.5 millimeter ID,
this is the rear rim, I have the Duke wheelset quick check up on my channel.
That's in the 25 to 30 millimeter range specified by Maxxis on their packaging but apparently Nino's
running these 2.4s on 30 millimeter rims, and when the weather is nastier, as in muddy or rainy,
he uses 25 millimeter ID rims with 2.25 tires. So I had this inflated to about 45 PSIs for
four or five days and here they are side by side ASPEN, Rekon Race 2.4, and Rekon Race 2.35 and
right off the bat you can see the 2.4, this seems to be bigger than the 2.35 and the ASPEN 2.4.
After a couple of summers of riding you can see the wear here on the 2.35 which is not too bad,
this was used as a rear tire. Obviously the new 2.4 has exactly the same thread pattern, you have
the same alternating rows of center knobs, and you have these cornering knobs that are similar
to something like the more aggressive tires, like the L-shaped ones of DHF or DHR2. Intermediate
knobs here in between so you don't have that aggressive channel for cornering aggressively,
this is more of a rounder profile tire as you see in this view. Aspen also gives us a nice
round profile but you can see that channel here, cornering channel between these cornering knobs
and the intermediates. Aspen seems to be using shorter knobs as well so here on the rolling side
you have slightly under 2 millimeter knobbies, all of these, and the corner ones are 3.3-3.4
millimeter tall. If you look at the Rekon Race these are like half a millimeter longer
everywhere. So here's 2.2-2.3 millimeters tall and then the cornering knobs you're gonna have
about 3.8 or close to 4 millimeter tall. Mow at 25 PSI the widest part of this Rekon Race is the
cornering knobs and you can see it almost 63 mm which is 2.47 inches, so that's a pretty nice
big tire for 2.4. Height of this tire is right at 60mm, this is 77 but my rim is 17 millimeter tall.
What I can also say is that this Rekon Race 2.4 it's a bigger volume tire than the 2.35
we're talking about 3mm more height and width for the 2.4. But let's take a look at the Aspen
and see how that compares. Cornering knobs are sticking out a tiny bit compared to the casing,
we're talking a bit over 60mm so 2.38", very close to the 2.4 specified. As for the height of this
tire, is right under 76mm with 16mm rim so again about 60 millimeter tall tire and that means big
volume tires that can be run at low pressure for maximum grip. I know Nino's running these
at 16 front 17 rear, PSIs of course. And now that you've seen the sizing you probably understand why
Maxxis has the warning on their packaging talking about clearance. Maxxis recommends 6mm here on the
seat stays, chain stays, seat tube and down by the bottom bracket, check that table that was provided
by Maxxis when launching the product, you can't find this on the Maxxis website for some reason. I
only have really limited experience with the Aspen 2.25 as a rear but I did run the Rekon Race mostly
as a trail tire, not race tire, in the back of my bikes. I've always used it with a beefier front
you can see a Dissector here that I'm going to take a closer look in the next weeks and months.
I know the cross-country races have restarted again a lot of those racers running Aspen up front
and in the rear. I've never really had the balls to have such a bold tire up front of my bikes
but I would be curious to hear if you guys used either the Aspen or the Rekon Race for racing,
whether they are front, rear, front and rear, that would be an interesting discussion to have.
So semi-slick, high volume tires from Maxxis, that's definitely not what they're known for but
it's a market that they're want to play in. And who knows maybe I'm even gonna try this aspen 2.4
at the front of my bike this summer. And that's quite a bit of information for one video, I hope
you guys found it useful and if you did don't forget to like, subscribe, comment, and until
next time hope to see you on the trails, why not running some Maxxis rubber. Cheers guys, cheers!