4 minute read
TiREd oF TYRES?
By Duncan Bennett, Member #4171
As everyone would expect, this will definitely have an adventure riding flavour so may not have much nourishment for the BMWMCQ road warriors. Those of you who continue to read, and yes I know your name, will hopefully get something out of this opinionated treatise on motorcycle tyres. There are two periods of intense learning in the motorcycling life journey. The first period for everyone throwing the leg over is learning to relate motorcycle model numbers, ultimately without including the hint of the manufacturer’s name, with what the motorcycle actually looks like. A recent example of how far I have to go was reading BMW model C 400 X in a list, and assuming it was a rebirthed hyper-cool Dakar Enduro racer until the photo revealed it was a scooter. Oh, that’s right, C is scooter in BMW world, still lots to learn. XR, SV, GSX, GS, GT, GTL, R, K, F, XC, ZV, RS, CRF all mean something but it takes a while to become confident you aren’t about to head over to inspect a scooter in your motocross gear. Thank heaven for Google Images, in a few browsing moments you’ll be all over it. The second period is learning about tyres, so to hopefully save the adventure riding oriented punters some time, here are my personal top 5 countdown with Number 1 the best:
Tyre Number 5: Shinko E805 (Rear) E804 (Front) – good grip, good life, very stiff
Reading tyre reviews doesn’t help much, rider A says they nearly died every time they went around a corner, rider B says they stick to all road surfaces like the proverbial baby pooh to a blanket. Tyres also have more subtle differences than motorcycles so Google Images doesn’t help much either, brand A has grooves that are 12.2mm deep and run at 77.3° to the rim while brand B grooves are 26.4mm apart and have compound X up the middle to increase life. What on earth does this mean when planning a ride around Australia? Does it scream like a cheesed-off Banshee when running on the highway? Not only does it take a while, but it can involve a lot of tyre purchases until you get it right. And even if you miraculously get it right first time you won’t know you got it right first time and so will then buy worse tyres the next time.
Tyre Number 4: Continental TKC80 – great grip, short life, and yes, I knocked him over
A good place to start is think what sort of riding you do or want to do, with a large But applied. Hard experience involving bone breakage applied the But. Adventure tyres are given an On road:Off road ranking, for example a 90:10 tyre means it is “designed” for 90% on-road riding and 10% offroad riding. This is a bit like giving a rifle a Sitting on The Rack:Shooting at a Charging Buffalo ranking. A 90:10 rifle will have no stock or sights because they aren’t needed on the rack and it will still fire one round so you should be right on the rare occasions you need to drop that maddened buffalo. But. In other opinionated words – I select tyres for my “reasonable” worst-case farm road scenario, which doesn’t mean a Toby Price worst-case scenario on the second last day of Dakar. 50:50’s or thereabouts are the ideal for our type of riding – lots of bitumen but occasions and even hours of loose
gravelly stuff, rocky stuff, sandy stuff, boggy stuff, and slippery stuff. The learning has been that I don’t need Marc Márquez performance on the bitumen and 50:50 tyres simply need some scraping of pegs avoidance when it is wet, otherwise at my level I just don’t notice.
Tyre Number 3: Heidenau Scout K60 – long life, good grip although not so great in the wet
So the usual trade-off ultimately still applies; performance versus life, with a small allowance for road noise – you can always ramp up the Boy George volume on the headset. For someone who does lots of bitumen and lots of kilometres, 10,000km is probably a minimum as it aligns with services and
33 allows for big trips. This puts Continental TKC80’s out of the picture tragically – they are soft so have
great grip but 6,000km is a stretch.
Tyre Number 2: Metzeler Karoo 3 – okay life, great grip, quiet, look very cool
We first met the Mitas E-07 in Africa, we’d started in Cairo with Heidenau K60s and changed them over in Nairobi. Did pretty much all terrain nasties south of there including slippery and sand. Lots and lots of sand, full days of sand. They had 11,000km on them at the end, and did another 10,000km over the home soil on return. Excellent on the bitumen as well, They have changed to the E-07+ without the centre strip on the rear, which I think gives slightly better off-road grip but slightly less k’s. Regardless hard to beat, but then again those other cool looking ones I haven’t tried yet might be even better….
Tyre Number 1:
Mitas E-07 – great life, fairly quiet, and great grip*
