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slidebite posted:Question regarding this: That section is sort of a broad overview oriented more towards the more extreme examples of tires (slicks/DOT Race tires and heavily track oriented street tires). In those realms, the tire companies have really stuck to their design styles over the last decade or so. Construction qualities and materials will vary depending on the desired use of the tire, but in general, as a result of the trickle down of technology from racing to street use, you see the same sort of design principal (tires with more flex or tires with less flex) carried out across the entire range of a company's tires. If they've dumped a lot of time into a tire design that flexes and grips well, they're not going to just abandon it for a different construction. They may modify it, but in general those tires brands fit into those catagories. The difference in size doesn't really reflect that much in the construction. Construction tends to be consistant across sizes in the same model of tire. Otherwise you'd end up with the front of your bike feeling different from the back of your bike.
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Jul 30, 2009 22:04
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What's the mass consensus about replacing with age rather than miles? My '07 Thruxton has the original OEM Metzlers on it - two years, 6,500 miles, plenty of tread. I'd like to replace them with something that has more grip and a rounder (more sportbike - purely for looks) profile, but I'm willing to wait until they need it. Ideally I'd also like something with a bit more grip as the Metzlers refuse to hold a line over the painted double yellow on the freeway.
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Jul 31, 2009 01:07
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That age and mileage on a set of s/t tyres isn't really all that worn. If you want to step up to something with more grip (or for looks), there's really no reason not to. Just see if you can keep the tyres they take off and flog them on CL. 
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Jul 31, 2009 01:11
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OrangeFurious posted:What's the mass consensus about replacing with age rather than miles? My 99 ST1100 is still on original rubber AFAIK @ 20000Kms.  It's always garaged and covered though which make a big difference. UV is the big killer accelerator for rubber products. I have to do the ISO guidelines for my company and 7 years is the given for natural rubber products in general. To be fair though, I'll be looking at a set for next season though.
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Jul 31, 2009 02:04
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It must be UV or ground ozone levels or something. My bike lives in the sun all day and my one year old (by date code, they've only been on the bike maybe 4 months) tires already are showing cracking around the treads and a bit on the sidewall. I honestly doubt at the current rate of deterioration that they'd make it anywhere near 7 years before they were dry rotted all to hell. Thankfully I put enough miles on them that they usually only last 6-8 months.
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Jul 31, 2009 04:29
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Apologies in advance if this isn't the best place to put this. While I know a decent amount about car tire brands, I know very little when it comes to motorcycle tires. I have a 1980 Suzuki GS850 GL that needs new tires (the tires on it are old and dryrotted), and I have no idea what I should be looking for other than "round" and "holds air". I'm a new owner/rider, usage will be city commuting with extended recreational use on weekends, eventually riding double up once I'm a more seasoned rider. Any suggestions?
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Aug 3, 2009 15:46
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This shop near me has a special on tires: Sport Bike Tire Special: From Just $249! Price Includes: Yokohama 120/70ZR-17 Shinko R009 Raven Front Tire Yokohama 180/55ZR-17 Shinko R009 Raven Rear Tire Removal/Disposal of old tires Installation, hand balancing, wheel alignment, chain adjustment, basic motorcycle inspection Anyone ridden these? Are they any good? Apparently they're made in Korea by a company that bought its equipment from now-defunct Japanese tire maker Yokohama. Edit: Nevermind, this is clearly a terrible price. Zenaida fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Aug 4, 2009 |
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Aug 4, 2009 08:26
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The ravens are shinko's "Sport touring" tire. I've heard mixed reviews, and wouldn't touch them unless I could get them both for 150$, mounted and ready to go.
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Aug 4, 2009 17:29
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My favorite online seller for moto tires is Tire Express. I ordered a set of Conti Road Attacks on a Monday and they delivered that Wednesday. Their shipping is free on tire orders over $100.
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Aug 5, 2009 05:07
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bung posted:My favorite online seller for moto tires is Tire Express. I ordered a set of Conti Road Attacks on a Monday and they delivered that Wednesday. Their shipping is free on tire orders over $100. http://www.swmototires.com/ is another good option. Not affiliated with them, but their prices are good and free shipping with 2 tires.
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Aug 5, 2009 05:21
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My '06 EX250 needs new shoes. Badly. I've got the stock dunlop tires right now. Is the date code in the little bar that reads, "LAB 2003?" Because drat, that means they're 6 years old and I'm not surprised I haven't been confident cornering. In any event, I'm thinking about the Pirello MT75's as suggested by ninja250.org. Any suggestions, comments? I'm going to be looking around town here in the next few days trying to find prices and availability. I'd like to have 'em on by the time I get my license endorsement.
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Aug 10, 2009 01:44
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The MT75s (Sport Demons) are excellent tires. The date code's not the thing that reads "LAB 2003". It's going to be 2 or 3 numbers in an oval.
Z3n fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Aug 10, 2009 |
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Aug 10, 2009 04:29
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8ender posted:I just want to say that for old bikes Cheng Shin used to offer almost exact matches for the original OEM tires and they were great tires. I'm greatly saddened by their exit from the tire market. Say what? I have CST's on my bicycles. And CST tires on my moped. You sure they didn't just pick a new name? JebattoRocket posted:This is probably a stupid question, but what are the advantages/disadvantages of running tires with tubes versus without? Are tubed tires more commonly found on dual sports and dirt bikes? Shlomo Palestein posted:Can you run tubeless on "tube" rated cast wheels? The GS people have been ignoring factory recommendations for years on this, and there's never been an incident. As long as you can get the tire to seat, you should be ok. However, I didn't tell you that. And if you chose to run tubeless on your tube type wheels, I didn't encourage it. Raven457 posted:I have a 1980 Suzuki GS850 GL that needs new tires Now on the car tires on a bike thing... I don't really see the problem with running car tires on the back of a bike. Yeah, you've got a square tire, at least in my experience, once it's up on an edge, they handle just fine. And given that it's the back of the bike, having a little less traction is a lot less disastrous than the front. The batbike from the latest batman film.... uses car tires. Sprint car tires, but car tires none the less. EDIT: I should have joined this thread long ago...
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Aug 10, 2009 09:11
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Nerobro posted:Now on the car tires on a bike thing... I don't really see the problem with running car tires on the back of a bike. Yeah, you've got a square tire, at least in my experience, once it's up on an edge, they handle just fine. And given that it's the back of the bike, having a little less traction is a lot less disastrous than the front. The problem with a square tire is this: The more you lean it, the more you reduce your contact patch. And once you lose it, and it starts to swing out, your chances of recovery are even lower as you reduce your contact patch more. The batbike also drove up a wall and did a backflip. Pointing at movies as a safety guide is pretty stupid. With that said, I'm sure that there are plenty of people that do it and simply do not corner their motorcycles, and probably don't ride in the rain, either. If conditions are always good, and you're a relatively sedate rider, than it's not instant death or anything. But when things go wrong, you hit some gravel, I'd rather have my tire working with me at increased lean angles, rather than against me. If you've ever seen a picture or a video of a motorcycle tire deflecting under load, you'll get some idea of how scary that video is. You can bend the sidewall of a motorcycle tire nearly double with a soft sidewall tire and a powerful motorcycle, increasing the contact patch a huge amount. Watching something like that where when you lean on the gas, the contact patch gets smaller just makes me cringe.
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Aug 10, 2009 15:13
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Z3n posted:The problem with a square tire is this: The more you lean it, the more you reduce your contact patch. And once you lose it, and it starts to swing out, your chances of recovery are even lower as you reduce your contact patch more. Forgetting the stunt that the batbike did up the wall of the building, the bike was real. I have a review around here somewhere of the suntman who helped them setup, and eventually rode the bike. The scenes where you see the bike running among people, were not composite shots, and the bike was really riding through the train station at a fair clip. (in fact, it was lasalle street station IIRC...) they tried several variations, and in the end used a full, unmodified tire in the back, and a tire that had the treads clipped to be a more round caracas up front. If you wanna be really silly, the batbikes lean angles just prove the wide tires, and low CG's make for radical lean angles at low speeds. Lesson here? Wider is not better!
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Aug 10, 2009 15:24
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Nerobro posted:Contact patch size is more defined by sidewall stiffness and tire pressure than carcass shape. Car tires can have some really soft sidewalls. That said, you're going to end up with some wacky contact patch shapes with a car tire on a bike. "I" wouldn't do it. I was just trying to say it's far from suicide, especially if you chose a reasonable width tire (like a 130 or 140). The video posted of taking a 30mph marked corner at 45 isn't anything remarkable (my rule is thumb is taking marked corners at double the posted speed..) but it does show that the bike is sane and navigable. The batbike never even really leaned over that far. Certainly not as far as you can get on even the cheapest chinese knockoff tires (say, shinko advances?), that's the thing and the problem with a setup like this...it'll work totally fine until you end up on your rear end. In fact, the bike will probably feel more "stable" as you have to induce some pretty serious steering effort to get it leaned over. I'd imagine the batbike was the same way. We are both agreed on that it's a bad idea, I think we're just stuck on semantics here. I just really don't think it's sane to mount a car tire on a motorcycle outside of an emergency situation. There's too many things that could happen where the tire's gonna fight you rather than work with you. I sort of wish I had the nerve to mount a car tire on one of my bikes and then go flog it around to see what it was like. Plus, those guys are running cruisers with limited lean angle and really, really wide rear rims, I think they're running something like 220s or something like that.
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Aug 10, 2009 15:32
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Z3n posted:*square tires* Have you seen they have 280 width tires now? They look like beachballs. Now here's a thought for you... With a bike like a Rocket 3, or a goldwing. A bike that weighs 900-1100lbs. You'll be putting a load on a tire much like a car would. (mind a car like a festiva would have 550lbs load on each front tire) I think this is something we need to submit to the mythbusters. I"m just not willing to offer my hide to the experiment.
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Aug 10, 2009 15:46
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Nerobro posted:Square tires give me a really weird feeling while riding. I've had the "ahem" pleasure of riding square tires three or four times. It leads to some really wacky steering feel. I'd never do that willingly. I thought the biggest tire out there was still the crazy like, 330 that they put on the back of some custom chopper. And yeah, they look totally absurd. But if you compare them to a car tire...  I've discovered that you can "reround" the profile of tires that have been squared off by riding them them on the "ridge" for awhile. My ZZR1200 had badly flatspotted tires, and after about 80 miles of aggressive twisty riding, they would hold a line without wiggling or requiring constant bar input, but they're still really sketchy if you try and really kick them over, as you've just effectively moved the ridge farther up the tire. I've had the same thing happen on my g/f's SV when she was commuting on it. The other thing that cars don't deal with is changing the contact patch the way bikes do. The cornering forces may be similar, but the way it rolls on the tire won't be the same at all. You'll never approach the level of angle on the tire that you get on a bike in a car. I also don't think that a car, even one of similar weight, is going to put the same level of cornering forces on the tire. Even an econobox like a Festiva can pull vastly more cornering load than a motorcycle. Furthermore, whereas a car tire can spin and slip a little and have it not be a huge deal, when a motorcycle tire starts to slide it's always a big deal. If they'll pay for the repairs and replacements to my gear, I'm willing to crash a bike to figure out what the edge of grip is like.
Z3n fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Aug 10, 2009 |
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Aug 10, 2009 16:49
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Nerobro posted:Say what? I have CST's on my bicycles. And CST tires on my moped. You sure they didn't just pick a new name? Well now I can't find where I read that and I feel like a fool. Maybe it was just hearsay?
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Aug 10, 2009 16:56
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8ender posted:Well now I can't find where I read that and I feel like a fool. Maybe it was just hearsay? I read it here (WARNING: AWFUL WEBSITE DESIGN), but Iron Pony still lists the HiMax tires that are on my Nighthawk, so I dunno. 8ender posted:I'm greatly saddened by their exit from the tire market. Motorcycle street tires, not the whole tire market.
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Aug 11, 2009 00:44
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Z3n posted:
One of the batbikes had what looked like Super Swamper TSL's (dualies maybe?), which I had on my jeep at the time. They are lovely on the road and supershitty in the rain. Totally stupid. At any rate, to add another question, are bike tires pretty much always bias? are there any radials?
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Aug 11, 2009 01:52
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JebattoRocket posted:One of the batbikes had what looked like Super Swamper TSL's (dualies maybe?), which I had on my jeep at the time. They are lovely on the road and supershitty in the rain. Totally stupid. All modern bike tires are radials. Bias plies are really only being produced mostly in oddball sizes for older bikes with narrow rims, when it comes to streetbikes.
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Aug 11, 2009 02:25
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Z3n posted:The MT75s (Sport Demons) are excellent tires. The date code's not the thing that reads "LAB 2003". It's going to be 2 or 3 numbers in an oval. Hmm, i haven't really found anything that looks like that. I'm replacing them anyway so oh well, but so far I've found 507 and 904 in 2 different spots respectively on my rear tire. The only number in an oval was what I said before. Weird.
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Aug 11, 2009 02:41
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JebattoRocket posted:One of the batbikes had what looked like Super Swamper TSL's (dualies maybe?), which I had on my jeep at the time. They are lovely on the road and supershitty in the rain. Totally stupid. I said what the tires were. The tread is obviously ia packed dirt tread. I can't remember if they are goodyear or firestone. But they are pure race tires.
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Aug 11, 2009 02:49
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Nerobro posted:I said what the tires were. The tread is obviously ia packed dirt tread. I can't remember if they are goodyear or firestone. But they are pure race tires. Ah sorry, I don't know what dirt race tires look like. I thought you were talking about a different batbike, if there is one. Looking at them now, not what I thought they were. I was thinking of this: http://matrixredesigned.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/batmobile_tumbler.jpg Darth Llama fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Aug 11, 2009 |
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Aug 11, 2009 02:56
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Jesus, Delta Tire wanted 300 bucks just for the Sport Demons. Found them online for 200 free shipping, and Delta Will install them for 30 bucks. Hell yeah.
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Aug 11, 2009 18:43
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Methusulah posted:Jesus, Delta Tire wanted 300 bucks just for the Sport Demons. Found them online for 200 free shipping, and Delta Will install them for 30 bucks. Hell yeah. Gimme dat link as I want to replace the stock IRCs on my '09 Ninja 250R.
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Aug 11, 2009 22:05
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I finally changed tires on my Tuono. Went from Mich PP's to Dunlop Roadsmarts. So far so good, the PPs were squared as all hell (probably 85% of my riding is commuting now  ) and the bike would almost fight me on turn in and not want to hold lean. The smarts tip in oh so easy and hold very neutral lean angle and it's easy to adjust midcorner. Pretty impressed with the grip, too. Hopefully I'll get more than 5k miles out of the rear. Modern tires  Oh and I don't think I ever want to change tires again, I've done about 5 sets now and while it has generally gone smoothly sometimes I hit a snag and it makes me want to die (took about 4 hours to get beads broken).
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Aug 11, 2009 23:09
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My bike has spoked wheels and valve stems that shoot straight up from the center of the rim. It is a pain in the rear end to feed a gas station air hose through my spokes to get an angle where I can inflate the tire. I need new valve stems anyway due to a slow leak on my rear, so is it feasible to have mine replaced with a side-angled stem? Can I even replace the stems on a tubed tire? I haven't touched a tube since I was a pre-teen with a Schwinn so I have no idea how they operate on big boy bikes. OrangeFurious fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Aug 11, 2009 |
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Aug 11, 2009 23:55
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frozenphil posted:Gimme dat link as I want to replace the stock IRCs on my '09 Ninja 250R. Bikebandit has them, $82.78 for the front and $114.63 for the rear. Not sure about the shipping, it's Seven bucks for me but i'm only a few hours north of them.
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Aug 12, 2009 00:01
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OrangeFurious posted:My bike has spoked wheels and valve stems that shoot straight up from the center of the rim. It is a pain in the rear end to feed a gas station air hose through my spokes to get an angle where I can inflate the tire. It can definitely be done. I've got angle ones on my trackbike. I'd just have a shop do it for ya. Edit: http://arizonamoto.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=SWMT&Category_Code=SprtDmn Free shipping, may be cheaper.
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Aug 12, 2009 00:01
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frozenphil posted:Gimme dat link as I want to replace the stock IRCs on my '09 Ninja 250R. http://www.motorcycle-superstore.com/1/28/396/6243/ITEM/Pirelli-Sport-Demon-Sport-Touring-Front-Tire.aspx Free shipping, gently caress yeah. E: Also, mine were in stock, I ordered around noon, and they're already shipped. Should have them by the time I get my license.
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Aug 12, 2009 00:50
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Z3n posted:It can definitely be done. I've got angle ones on my trackbike. I'd just have a shop do it for ya.
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Aug 12, 2009 06:36
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Modern Triumphs have angled stems specifically to let people inflate the tyres using garage forecourt pumps designed for car tyres.
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Aug 12, 2009 07:44
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Here ya go. http://www.dual-star.com/index2/Equipment/valve_stem_extensions1.htm
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Aug 12, 2009 07:46
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Nerobro posted:He's got tubed tires. He'll need to buy tubes with angled stems. Those don't exist as far as i'm aware. According to this, the thruxton 900 has tubeless tires.
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Aug 12, 2009 16:55
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EvilDonald posted:Here ya go. Beautiful, thanks. Z3n posted:According to this, the thruxton 900 has tubeless tires. Hence the confusion. I gave up on the internet solving this riddle and called the one Triumph dealer in SoCal that isn't incompetent. The '07 Thruxton has tubes. I don't like tubes.
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Aug 12, 2009 18:51
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Tires arrived today. They look pretty amazing, will probably get them on Saturday. Is there anything I should know about taking the wheels off and putting them on? IE- Brake pads/pistons, bearings, axels, what-have-you? Does anything need to be re-greased?
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Aug 18, 2009 20:20
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Basically, remember orientation for any spacers, usually brake calipers have to come off (just a couple caliper mount bolts, don't mess with pads), then I use a zip tie so the caliper isn't hanging from the brake line. Axle gets a wipe down and thin coat of grease if it looks it needs it.
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Aug 18, 2009 21:36
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Methusulah posted:Tires arrived today. They look pretty amazing, will probably get them on Saturday. Is there anything I should know about taking the wheels off and putting them on? IE- Brake pads/pistons, bearings, axels, what-have-you? Does anything need to be re-greased? When you have the brakes off the rotors, don't pump the brake lever, as you can force the pistons out of their seats. No fun. Also, don't hang the brake calipers via the lines, it's not good for the connectors on the lines. I'd also repack the wheel bearings as well as feeling them, they should slide smoothly. If they don't or feel clicky, you need to get some new ones. Besides that, it's pretty much as infinotize says.
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Aug 18, 2009 23:07
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