Pit Bull has a new off-road tire on the trail called the Mad Dog. We first spotted a set of Pit Bull tires on a friend's Flattie last January at the San Diego 4 Wheeler's Superstition Mountain run. They looked interestingly different. We noticed the thick sidewall bead protectors, deep lugs, and new aggressive tread pattern. Our friend hooked us up with Mike Green, owner of Pit Bull Tires of St. Louis, Missouri. Mike sent us a set of 39x14.50-17LT Pit Bull Mad Dog tires to test. This is a strong, bias-ply, load range D, four-ply nylon tread, and four-ply nylon sidewall tire. The 39x14.50-17LT Mad Dog actually measures about 37 inches in height when off the vehicle. We like this size because it fills in the height gap between the available 37-inch and 40-inch tires.
After mounting up the new Mad Dogs, we headed for Moab, Utah. In order for these tires to perform on the trails, the first thing we discovered was that we needed to air down. We mean really air down. We found that 5 psi was similar to 12 psi on comparable tires. A plus for the Mad Dog is that at 5 psi, the tire didn't lose a lot of height, which means better ground clearance. Driving at higher speeds on graded roads also felt more stable in comparison to other tires at extremely low pressure.
The Pit Bull Mad Dog has a strong tread and sidewalls, which usually means a lack of flexibility Jeeping the rocks and ledges. Surprisingly, these tires flex around rocks and ledges very well. The bead protectors on the Mad Dog are thick, which helps protect our beadlock rings too.
Moab has very dry, fine sand during the summer - it's like driving in quicksand. When driving in the sand these tires stayed on top and the side lugs acted like paddles allowing good traction when accelerating. Our group took a drive down to Coyote Canyon. This trail has large boulders, dirt, wall climbs, and descents. We did just as well as the rest of our group (most were running 42-inch competition sticky compound tires). Comparing stickies with DOT-legal rubber is like comparing apples to oranges, so we were impressed with our Mad Dog tires.
This trip was just another dry, hot, and dusty weekend in the desert, so mud was not in the equation. As well as the Mad Dogs worked in the dirt, we surmise they'll do well in the mud. After all, they are mud tires. At the end of the weekend, we can report that the Mad Dogs did not let us down. They performed very well in the rocks, slick rock, and sand. We called Mike at Pit Bull after our trip and asked him what he was doing differently in the tire construction that makes these tires work so well. He politely didn't answer and honestly, we didn't expect him to reveal his company's trade secrets. The important thing is the Mad Dogs perform well in most all off-road environments.