Rim protectors, tires are sometimes referred to in a light-hearted way, but our author reminds us to never, never underestimate the need for good rubber.
I?ve been riding a lot of years, gone through a lot of tires, fallen down a few times. If somebody asks me what the most important advance in motorcycle technology has been in the last 50 years, I say tires. Though brakes are a close second. Back in the late 1950s, when I began riding, many bikes had good handling and adequate power, but they all had lousy tires.
For me, tires are the most important components of any motorcycle. My life depends on those tires. I look after my tires, obsessively monitoring the pressure, and judging the wear. Any rider who does not check the tire pressure at least once a week is, in my mind, not bright. I remember an accident on a freeway some years back, near the office where I worked, where a Gold Wing in the center lane, two up, rush hour, went out of control, crashed, and both rider and passenger were killed from being hit by other vehicles.
The highway patrol looked at the wrecked bike and figured that the rear tire had gone flat, gone off the rim, and you can imagine the rest. When was the last time the rider had checked his tire pressure? We?ll never know.
But you, gentle reader, get that tire gauge out and check your pressure before you fire up the bike the next time. I?m using a Roadgear digital gauge these days, which does the job for me. There is always much discussion about the accuracy of various gauges, and the give-away pencil-types that you get for putting $60 of gas in your Yukon can be of dubious quality. However, most important is to note any loss in air pressure from check to check; even a cheap gauge should inform you of that.
Worn tires are bad, and when in doubt, I put on new tires. Somebody came up with the statistic that 80 percent of tire failure occurs in the last 20 percent of tire life. If a pair of tires costs me $250, I am perfectly willing to waste $50 by changing both a bit early, rather than a bit too late.
I?ve ridden tires well beyond their usable limits several times. Once was in India at a time when the government did not like importing anything?if an Indian factory did not make it, you could not buy it. And nobody made a 4.00 x 18 tire, so I rode mine down to the cord, put the bike on a train to Bombay, then by boat we went to Mombasa, Kenya. There, I left the bike on the dock while I took the rear wheel into town and found a suitable fit.
Thirty years ago I was up in Anchorage, Alaska, and a too-cursory glance at the rear tire seemed to show enough tread to get back down to British Columbia. I got as far as Ross River in the Yukon before the first flat, and realized that I had gravely misjudged the longevity of the tire. I rode slowly into Watson Lake hoping to find a replacement, but nothing was available. I ended up putting folded newspapers in between the patched tube and the tire, and limping down to Dawson Creek at a very stately pace.
Sue and I keep four of our own motorcycles on the road around here, and probably roll up a collective 20,000 miles in a year. Which means we buy a lot of tires. And how do I choose the tires? That?s a good question. There are more than a dozen tire manufacturing companies vying for my dollars, and they put out lots of different tires, for different applications, and in different sizes. And different prices. My advice: Do not go cheap on tires.
The sport biker might be happy to spend $400 on a pair of super-sticky tires that will last maybe 2,500 miles. Whereas the touring rider might have one thing in mind: mileage. While you dual-purpose riders have to decide where you spend most of your time, and if you want semi-knobbies for the old forest roads, or a more asphalt-oriented tread.
I recently put a pair of Dunlop D607s on my Suzuki DR650, replacing the knobbier D606s, as I realized that 95 percent of the DR?s time was spent on pavement. My wife is getting a pair of Avon HDKs on her Ninja 500, which I believe are a good all-around choice, with reasonable tire life and enough stickiness to keep the cornering comfortable.
Every week somebody asks me about tires, thinking I know lots. ?Clement, you have a Honda ST1100 and so do I; what?s the best tire to buy?? Just today the UPS guy came around with a package, and he asked me what I would recommend for his Suzuki SV650. I am certainly not an expert in such things. I tell these questioners to do some research, read product evaluations like we do in this magazine, ask friends and acquaintances who ride the same bikes.
My first new bike was a 1960 Triumph Bonneville, with Dunlop K70s on the spoked rims. These were state-of-the-art tires, and, by gorry, I fell down a lot when it rained. Tire technology was pretty basic back then, and while these tires were adequate in the dry, the compound was seriously lousy in the wet. I learned to live with it, and to slow down a whole lot when water was on the road.
What do I know about tires? I appreciate the capabilities and sensitivities of those speedy riders who can push a tire to its max and not fall down, but for me, when a tire starts sliding, I feel that I am about to lose control. Riding over those tar snakes used to patch cracks in the road is never pleasant, nor is crossing a metal-mesh bridge on a rainy, windy evening?like the one across the St. Lawrence River from Ogdensburg, New York, to Johnstown, Ontario. Tires are good, getting better, but they will never be perfect.
I know a little about the history. Back in 1846 somebody patented the concept of pneumatic tires, but it wasn?t until Scotsman John Boyd Dunlop built a factory to produce them in 1890 that the idea took
off. Up to around 1980, motorcycle tires ran on spoked wheels and used innertubes, then came cast wheels and tubeless tires?which made me a very happy rider. I?ve fixed probably 50 punctured innertubes over the years, and it is not a job I like. Give me a plug kit any day, so that I can get home.
Another major change was the advent of radial motorcycle tires in the 1980s. But to tell the truth, I cannot tell the difference between a bias-ply and a radial when I?m riding. Yes, I must be that insensitive. I run radials on my ST1100 because in the opinion of more learned people than myself, radials are slightly better than bias-ply tires considering my riding habits and the size of the motorcycle. I am perfectly willing to let others whom I respect do the research, and listen
to their conclusions. I genuinely do believe that when a reputable company comes out with a new tire, it is better than the old one it replaces, but
I probably will not be able to tell
the difference.
The construction of a motorcycle tire is much more labor-intensive than that of a car tire, which is one reason they cost so darned much, and the market is much smaller, so the manufacturer does not save on volume. However, there is no price to be put on my or your well-being, and good tires should be uppermost in everyone?s mind.
There is no ?best? tire for any particular bike, but there are a lot of good choices. How you come to your decision, that is up to you.
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