You are here
Home > Product Reviews >

Long Term Review of my Vittoria Terreno Dry G2.0 TNT Tubeless Tyres

Vittoria Terreno Dry Tyre Fitted

I’m going to make an early declaration that here in the UK the winter is now over! We’ve started April with nothing but blue skies and sunshine and had barely a drop of rain, there’s been some cool mornings but nothing leading to proper frost. So now that I’ve said that we can expect the weather to change suddenly, storms to roll in and the BBQs to be well and truly packed away again! But anyway, there is a purpose to this opener; my winter tyres will soon be coming off the rims and a pair of fresh slicker summer tyres taking their place. A good time for a review of how they have performed then.

Let’s go back to the start – it’s a very good place to start!

When I was looking for some tyres, I was wanting to try out something with a little more bite in terms of tread than a slick but something that would still be fast on the road. The idea being that I could head off down a gravel track should the desire hit me and also ride through the worst of the winter on the worst of the roads without grip concerns or puncture problems. In the end I spent a lot of time trying to decide between the Terreno Dry and the Terreno Zero tyres and the ‘Dry’ version just won the contest.

Vittoria Terreno Dry in its packaging
Vittoria Terreno Dry in its packaging

The ‘Zero’ tyres have a slick central section for fast riding on the roads whereas the ‘Dry’ have a slightly more aggressive treaded pattern there instead, alongside a more aggressive knobbly shoulder for gripping in the dirt. I figured this purchase would be for winter riding anyway and so I could afford to be a little slow on the roads through the winter if that ended up being the situation. And the extra tread would give me the opportunity to really try out the bike in a gravel type scenario. The tread in the central section is formed from a series of hexagon which are actually angled in the direction of travel, this apparently improves rolling resistance.

Vittoria Terreno Dry - The tread pattern
Vittoria Terreno Dry – The tread pattern

Obviously it’s difficult to determine how fast I would have been riding if I’d had different tyres fitted and there are too many other variables to consider for comparing to other years riding. My fitness is number 1 variable, weather conditions, who I was riding with and so on. However I can report back that I have not felt like I’ve been slowed down by the tyres and I’ve ridden flat roads, hills, local roads that I’m familiar with and those further away too. The real test will be when I switch back to some slicks in a week or two and see if I notice a significant difference that way around.

Grip Profile from the packaging
Grip Profile from the packaging

In terms of grip, I certainly cannot fault these tyres. Gravel, dirt tracks, roads, muddy patches on the road, wet, dry, in fact all conditions that I’ve been able to throw at them they have coped admirably with. I did lock up once when I had to brake very heavily at a junction but it was a controllable loss of grip and considering I’m a fairly lightweight rider and have hydraulic disc brakes I that’s to be expected. Certainly I have full confidence when out and about riding on these tyres; something I wasn’t able to say about the Hutchinson Sector tyres in the past.

So how about wear and puncture resistance? Well so far I haven’t had to take either tyre off the rims. The front tyre hasn’t had any punctures that I’m aware of, although it’s always possible that one occurred and sealed itself. The rear tyre did have a puncture once. It was due to a small flint like piece of stone (the usual sort of thing) but the tyre didn’t let me down mid-ride and the first I knew about the puncture was the following day when I happened to notice it had gone flat in the garage. A positive to this was that I was able to pump it back up (the tyre had remained seated on the rim just fine) rotate the wheel so the hole was at the bottom and leave it to seal itself. I then topped up the air and that has been that.

The puncture that cause no problems at all
The puncture that cause no problems at all

As for wear, the front looks like new but the rear is starting to wear in the central tread. The hexagons aren’t stepped like they were anymore, although they haven’t started disappearing as of yet. Hopefully I’ll get a second full winter out of the rear when it goes back on at the end of the summer. I guess it depends on how far I want to push the tread.

Vittoria Terreno Dry fitted
Vittoria Terreno Dry fitted

These tyres have the Vittoria TNT carcass which includes a stronger sidewall and can be identified by the grey sidewall rather than the black of some of the road tyres. Maybe a sensible feature to have for the gravel type of rides but one of those features you don’t know you appreciate if it’s all working as it should! Mounting them on the wheels tubelessly was a piece of cake, as I’ve come to expect these days, with most of the wheels and tyre combinations that I’ve had. Being a larger tyre than those that I’ve been riding on road in recent years, they needed more sealant that usual to fully seal. So I seated the tyres, deflated them, and then added sealant through the valve and repeated the process a couple of times until they held pressure as I’d like. I’m not one for pumping up my tyres before every ride, but then equally I don’t like to ride around with loads of excess sealant sloshing about in my tyres either.

The only issue I’ve come across was a self inflicted problem. When I fitted the tyres, I didn’t cut off the bits of excess rubber from the moulding process that stick out at the sides. Normally I wouldn’t have an issue with this but because the Kinesis RTD frame at the rear is quite tight for a 31c tyre, those rubber ‘bits’ have scratched away some of the paint from the frame where they’ve flicked against the seat stays. As you can just see in the photo below.

Mind out for the rubber 'bits' - cut them off
Mind out for the rubber ‘bits’ – cut them off

Overall, I’m happy with my first gravel tyres. I’m happy with them as winter tyres. And I’m happy enough with the Vittoria Terreno range that I have now also bought the Zeros! I intend to put the Zeros on now for the summer rather than going to an all out road tyre, after all they will be at least as quick as the Drys have been and they have done me fine. If I was racing, then sure, I would want the fastest possible option but I’m not.

Check out some of the other riding I’ve done on these tyres here – http://spokerevolutions.co.uk/giving-the-new-gravel-tyres-a-true-test-in-the-yorkshire-dales

11 thoughts on “Long Term Review of my Vittoria Terreno Dry G2.0 TNT Tubeless Tyres

  1. Hi there, enjoyed this review. I have had some of these tyres on my bike for 6 UK road rides now and have got punctures on 3 of those rides. Do you think I have just been extremely unlucky, you don’t seem to mention any problems with punctures.

    1. That’s odd. I’ve had them on my bike since 21 April 2020 and covered 6,949.8 km without a single puncture to date. And that includes gravel rides, cycle paths and ridding throughout this winter.

      There are two versions of the tyre casing – One is TNT (This is the one I have) and the other is TLR (lighter and less robust). Which do you have? Also are you using them tubeless like I am or with inner tubes?

      1. Thanks for your swift response. I have the TNT. I am running then with innertubes, maybe I need to go tubeless. It was little pieces of glass every time with the punctures so I thought maybe it was just extremely unfortunate. I’ll swap them over to tubeless and keep my fingers crossed!

  2. Thanks for a nice review! Stumbled upon it when googling tires for a biketrip this summer with mixed roads. 30% gravel/forrests and 70% asphalt. According to test from bicyclerollingresistance this may well be the tire for me except that my canyon ultimate frame official tire clearance is 30mm. Can you tell me what the measured width is on the 31mm?

    1. Unfortunately I can’t as I don’t have these tyres fitted at the moment. They are hanging up in the garage, as I switched to the Terreno Zeros for everyday road cycling. Also, if I were to measure the width of them that would only really be valid for my Hunt wheels; you might find that they expand to a different width on different rims.

      If the official tyre clearance on your Canyon is 30 mm I would expect that you might have problems though. The official tyre clearance on my Kinesis is 34 mm and when I did have them fitted they were pretty close fitted, with not much space for debris to pass through.

      1. I see. The zeros were my second choice. I should take a look at your review of them then.

        Is it still the Hunt Aero Light disc you’re riding which you mentioned in another post? In that case it is comparable because I can see that the wheelset has a 17mm wide rim bed and 22mm outer width which is similar to my dt swiss wheelset with 18 mm wide rim bed and 22 outer width. So whenever you get the possibility I will really appreciate it if you could measure the 32mm zeros you riding at the moment.
        The official clearance might be 30mm. But I’ve seen posts on reddit were people fit wider tyres as well. And I’ve measured 40mm clearance in the frame it self.

        1. Sorry it’s taken a while to get the opportunity to do the measuring. My rear tyre measures 32.3 mm and the front measures 31.8 mm – I don’t know if the difference is due to variation in the product or some kind of difference due to the miles I’ve ridden on them and the rear being the one that takes most of the rider weight.

          I think from my experience that both the 31c Dry and the 32c Zero need around the same amount of clearance. The dry may be smaller but it’s got the little shoulder knobs to account for.

  3. Curious to know your thoughts on the zeros vs the drys. Ive been running the 35c. drys for my everyday tires for a while now and have been pretty happy with them despite getting two punctures in my rear tire. They plugged up easy and have held up so far. Was looking at getting a new rear but was thinking of switching to the drys mostly because bicyclerollingresistance says the drys are faster than the zeros. Do you notice a big difference between the two speed wise?

    1. I would say the zeros seem a little faster but it so hard to compare accurately to be fair. Neither of them slow me down much when riding on the road.

      And I like the flexibility of having gravel tyres instead of road tyres. You can head off down any track as you please.

Leave a Reply

Top