I have a 2009 Polaris 500 HO and I'm wanting to put some new tires and wheels on it. When I ride, the majority of the trails are harder surfaces, loose rock, that type, not alot of real steep climbing ( unless I go to the mountians). . I would like a tire that would have good traction but have good wear on a the harder trails. Any ideas ??

 

for harder surfaces such as dirt any tire would be good really. If asphalt/concrete is what you will be running on then a tire with the lugs closest to each other would be best. The more rubber that is on the pavement the better the wear on the tire and smoother ride. If the lugs are spaced farther apart then it will be a rougher ride and the tire will not last as long. I personally can not give a specific tire name for your application. With the trails I ride i chose Swamplite tires. I ride hard pack,sand,mud(not mud bogs but muddy trails),rock,loose gravel,just about all of it. my tires have around 4500 miles on them and are almost half way worn. when in loose rock i use 4wd to keep the tires from spinning and wearing down quicker,i dont plow with them either and all 4 tires are the same size so i can switch them from front to back to keep them wearing evenly. Other tires that ive used are more for mud,so i would not recommend them as they would be too rough for your style of riding i think.

 

A lot of people who ride mostly hard pack with occasional mud thrown in like the Maxxix Bighorns. As Mudslingingfool said, pretty much any tire will do the trick for the type of riding you'll be doing. I wouldn't get a mud tire in your circumstances. They can be a bit of a rough ride on hard pack.

 

Steer away from any mud tire, and find a good radial tire that fits your budget. Read whatever you can on them, watch some reviews on youtube (ATVTelevision or something like that has quite a few videos). Make your decision from there. I went through this a month ago and ended up taking a stab at Bear Claw HTR radials. Not much info on them when I got them, and of course a brand new tire so I have no idea how they will do, but they looked good, and were about $60-70 less than Bighorns overall. (they were basically at the upper end of my budget and Bighorns were over my budget and weighed just a bit more). In the end, aftermarket tires are better than stock tires by a longshot pretty much regardless of what you end up buying.

 

I know the question has been asked a million times. I have 25x10x12's on the rear and 25x8x12 on the front, I'm going to stay with the 25"s, is there an advantage of putting the same size tires on all the way around or is better with different sizes ?? Thanks, Tom

 

For occasional trail riding the smaller width tire in front will allow better and easier steering. It really doesnt matter too much, its more of a personal preference. The reason i like the same size tire is:I ride hard pack,sand,mud(not mud bogs but muddy trails),rock,loose gravel,just about all of it so I want both front and rear tires to be tough and I like the extra traction the front tire gets with being wider.
Here is how i see or think of it and ive said several other times on here and other sites. If you have an 8" or 9" wide tire in front and an 11" or 12" wide tire in the rear and you ride in the snow the front tires will act like pizza cutters and cut through the snow while the wider rear tires will tend to float on top more. same for mud. If you ride in mud then the smaller front tires have less traction while the rear gets more traction. So for me,i split the difference and i run 10" wide tires all the way around and for me it works best for my type of riding. I do alot of hunting and i make trips to the west so snow is always a factor. I wanted deep lugs,higher clearance,and a tire to handle what i throw at them. For me it was a 28" tall, 10" wide tire with 1.25" lugs.

 

Wider tires on the front will cause clearance issues on a lot of ATVs and if it does you'll have to use spacers. That would make the front end a few inches wider than stock tires without spacers.

 

Jumbofrank is right about that one. I went one size up to 26" tires that are 1" wider than the stock tires. So, on each side of the tire you are 1/2" wider. I ended up rubbing against my tie rod ends. So, I put a 3/8" spacer on both front hubs and that was enough to clear the tie rod ends.

 

05' Sportsman 500 HO and 06' Sportsman 500 EFI LE...I'm running ITP BajaCross on both and love them. I have 26x9 up front and 26x11 in back (on 12" ITP 212 rims). I wanted a little taller tire for ground clearance, and a little wider tire to help stay on top of the deep Utah powder! The BajaCross are excellent on hard pack, loose rock/dirt, rock crawling and snow. They wear like iron and are an 8 ply radial. Their Achilles heal would be ooey gooey mud, Louisiana gumbo kinda mud. We don't have much of that out here in the West, so they work great for me.

 

A little late seeing this thread, but if you are still shopping, here's my input. A 12x7 rim with a 4+3 offset will allow you to put 9" wide tires on the front without rubbing the tie rod ends. They will allow you to go as wide as 12" on the rear. I would step up to a 26" tall tire as this will give you a huge selection of tires to choose from. Your 500 will do fine with 26's on it. Maxxis Bighorn tires would be a good choice of tire for the riding you described.