New Tyre Advice

underwaterdog

My 2007 Suzuki DL650 V-Strom is in for its service and a new rear tyre is being fitted as it had developed a slow leak and was near the end of its life anyway.

This is the first time I've had a tyre replaced on a bike and have heard that you should 'take it easy' for a while on new rubber. Can anyone expand on what that really means?

Richard tea

Basically all new tyres have a protective coating to keep the rubber fresh whilst in storage. It sort of like a wax coating. This coating must be scrubbed off with gentle riding or as Delboys garage has done, get scotch pad and scrub the tyre with warm water until the coating is gone. I also had a mechanic tell me that dust from a driveway can be rubbed into the tyre to get rid of the coating.

Richard tea

punisher5112

Make sure a good decent quality Tyre is fitted as you need a good soft compound.

Take it extremely easy in the wet for at least a 100 km. Take very easy on cornersYou should also consider changing both tyres together and very important that they are the same make.

Max Headroom

punisher5112 wrote: »

Make sure a good decent quality Tyre is fitted as you need a good soft compound.

Take it extremely easy in the wet for at least a 100 km. Take very easy on cornersYou should also consider changing both tyres together and very important that they are the same make.

Old wives tale imo....mixing tyres is not a problem..BUT I would buy decent brands...

punisher5112

Max Headroom wrote: »

Old wives tale imo....mixing tyres is not a problem..BUT I would buy decent brands...

Two different makes and compounds handle differ

Max Headroom

punisher5112 wrote: »

Two different makes and compounds handle differ

Are you Marc Marquez?......:)

arybvtcw0eolkf

Take it easy for a bit, a day commuting and you'll be grand.

Not need to go replacing both tyres together, and mixing brands isn't a problem either ~ as Max said, 'tis an old wives tale.

What tyre did you fit to the Vstrom?.. I've Bridgestone Trail Wings on mine.

underwaterdog

I didn't get to choose but it's a Michelin Anakee III.

The front doesn't need to be replaced so I wasn't going to swap that out just to have a matching pair.

arybvtcw0eolkf

underwaterdog wrote: »

I didn't get to choose but it's a Michelin Anakee III.

The front doesn't need to be replaced so I wasn't going to swap that out just to have a matching pair.

They're suppose to be a great tyre.

Although the DL650 won't stress too many tyres I suspect.

And yes, there's no point in changing both tyres. That would be stupid.

Esel

Sonny Wailing Lobster wrote: »

They're suppose to be a great tyre.

Although the DL650 won't stress too many tyres I suspect.

And yes, there's no point in changing both tyres. That would be stupid.

Depends. I was getting a first replacement rear tyre @ 6,000 miles; thought the front was fine, plenty of tread left.. The mechanic, whose opinion I respected, pointed out the serious chamfering on the tread blocks. I had done a lot of hard riding in very hot temperatures. New front fitted!

listermint

I dont like my Anakees tbh, they came with the bike plenty of life in them but they just are not grippy enough when wet.

Not a fan of them hugely. Handy in the dry etc but when is Ireland every that dry

punisher5112

Sonny Wailing Lobster wrote: »

Take it easy for a bit, a day commuting and you'll be grand.

Not need to go replacing both tyres together, and mixing brands isn't a problem either ~ as Max said, 'tis an old wives tale.

What tyre did you fit to the Vstrom?.. I've Bridgestone Trail Wings on mine.

So your saying if I have a crap Tyre on the front and the best on the rear that this will not affect the bikes handling????

Tigger

punisher5112 wrote: »

So your saying if I have a crap Tyre on the front and the best on the rear that this will not affect the bikes handling????

If you've a crap tyre on the front change it
If it's decent don't, when you corner you should be on the throttle so the weight shifts to the back as the back tyre has the bigger contact patch the old idea of having a grippy front and a "touring" rear has been disproven

Max Headroom

punisher5112 wrote: »

So your saying if I have a crap Tyre on the front and the best on the rear that this will not affect the bikes handling????

Crap as in bald ..or crap as in cheap brand...??

arybvtcw0eolkf

punisher5112 wrote: »

So your saying if I have a crap Tyre on the front and the best on the rear that this will not affect the bikes handling????

And where in the name of sweet baby Jesus did I say that?. Cop on.

If you've a crap tyre on the front, change the fecking thing with or before the rear.

Clear enough for you?.

sleepysniper

Speaking of tires, I will need to throw a new rear on mine soon.

What is the go to brand these days? (Been a while...)

BT014 is what I'll be replacing - have these been updated?

What are these PR3/PR4's like that I've heard so much about and how would they fare on a GSXR1000? Looking for something that will stretch past the 2000 mile mark..:pac:

MarcoAntonio23

sleepysniper wrote: »

Speaking of tires, I will need to throw a new rear on mine soon.

What is the go to brand these days? (Been a while...)

BT014 is what I'll be replacing - have these been updated?

What are these PR3/PR4's like that I've heard so much about and how would they fare on a GSXR1000? Looking for something that will stretch past the 2000 mile mark..:pac:

Metzeler RoadTec Z8 Interact

arybvtcw0eolkf

sleepysniper wrote: »

What are these PR3/PR4's like that I've heard so much about and how would they fare on a GSXR1000? Looking for something that will stretch past the 2000 mile mark..:pac:

I found the PR3 brilliant and got almost 15000km on the rear, a really fantastic tyre (I ran it on a BMW R1100S).

The front PR3 wore horribly.

I'd suggest googling PR3 and PR4 failures and problems, there have been a few recorded.

MarcoAntonio23

Radial tyres are constructed by laying steel belts between layers of rubber & composite.
Each layer is a "plie" & these plies are laminated to one another when the tyre is created.
If the steel belts become warm enough (typically because of under-inflation), they can separate from the rubbers plies, aka "delaminate."

Hotblack Desiato

That does happen but it's almost always down to rider abuse/neglect. Very rarely a fault with the tyre itself.

I've just got a new PR4 on the front and have a half worn PR3 on the rear, but I do keep an eye on my pressures so not worried at all.

I've only done about 50 miles on the new front so far but the shine is well gone off the tyre, there's no need to baby the tyre for a set mileage, it's very visible when the coating is gone. Obviously it will wear off the centre section first, you then gradually build up the lean angles until it's all gone (chicken strips aside :pac: ) so you're always cornering on a contact patch that is mostly grippy rubber and only part of it is release compound. This doesn't take long at all to wear off.

Also have never had an issue with mixing brands never mind 'models' of tyre, the things to worry about with tyres are inflation, tread and age, if those are OK then you've nothing to worry about. I've been using Avons for the last few years, but got the rear PR3 due to a puncture, I let the front Avon wear down to the legal limit with no problems at all, it's actually the most I've ever let a front wear down...

punisher5112

Sonny Wailing Lobster wrote: »

And where in the name of sweet baby Jesus did I say that?. Cop on.

If you've a crap tyre on the front, change the fecking thing with or before the rear.

Clear enough for you?.

Oh wow comedian..

Ive plenty of experience and Op asked for advice I gave my opinion I had no problem replacement when 1 would go but never mix makes or compounds

Hotblack Desiato

The experience of myself and many others who have done it is that mixing makes and models of tyre is no problem at all.

A lot of this is probably myth going back to years ago when radial tyres were a new thing, radial front and crossply rear can produce weird handling effects (on cages anyway*) but there are few if any bikes on the road today where both types of carcass are an option, bigger bikes have radials and smaller bikes have crossplys.


*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrRz_ItWWDw

Irony is that this alarmist 70s public information film chose probably the best handling car of the era to make a point about loss of control! You could lose it much easier in any rear wheel drive Ford just giving it too much welly out of a turn, never mind about mixing tyres.

Del2005

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrRz_ItWWDw

Irony is that this alarmist 70s public information film chose probably the best handling car of the era to make a point about loss of control! You could lose it much easier in any rear wheel drive Ford just giving it too much welly out of a turn, never mind about mixing tyres.

Maybe they were showing what happens to a good car so people could figure out that the bad cars would be worse there was some common sense years ago unlike now when it's always someone else's fault.

Max Headroom

thats just a bit of driftin gone wrong.....:D

No such a thing as common sense these days..if theyre not told by youtube or google they dont understand..:p

zubair

With new tyres I just ride the same as I would in wet conditions for the first 50 or so clicks. Gradually increase lean angles. You can generally tell when you've got more grip and they're broken in.

I've mixed brands in the past and while it's not life threatening to do so I've always found that same brand and model give better handling. I think mainly due to the profile and compounds of the tyres complementing each other.

I find the PR4s great. Tried a couple of tyre brands now and michelins are my favourite. Great in the wet and heat up well in the dry.