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GUIDE TO CHOOSING BIKE TYRES

Courtesy of MCN's "Motorcyclists Welcome"

Tyres - no other part of a motorcycle is talked about more often. They are the subject of long debates down the pub or the bike club and although many of us might not like to admit it, we don’t really understand them. In fact the only time we notice them is when something happens such as an unexpected slide.

The most common discussion centres around which is the best tyre of the moment, and the answer to that is there is no single best tyre. No single tyre can be the answer to everyone’s needs. The question should be: what is the best tyre for my intended riding and is this tyre suitable for my bike? And this is where you have to be honest with yourself when choosing your next set of tyres.

One former BSB champion recently said that today’s normal road-going Supersport tyres have more performance than his race slicks of just 10 years ago, but unlike his slicks the Supersport road tyres could be ridden in the wet and will last for 4,000 miles and not 100 miles.

This serves to show the massive advances in street tyre performance that have been made by tyre manufacturers in recent years. So with this in mind, unless you are intending to ride at a track day, do you really need tyres intended for that purpose? If you ride your supersport bike purely on the road wouldn’t you be better choosing tyres designed primarily for that purpose?

The same is true for all types of riding. If your riding consists mostly of long journeys, maybe with a passenger, shouldn’t you be using Sport Touring tyres? After all, it wouldn’t be much use if your Hypersport tyre reaches the end of its life halfway through your two-week holiday. On the other side of the coin, what would be the point of using Sport Touring tyres if you regularly attend track days? This type of tyre simply wouldn’t allow you to exploit the full potential of your bike on a race circuit.

It is just common sense really but you would be surprised at how many people get it wrong. Sometimes this is because they are led by the well-intended but misguided advice of friends, who often know no more about tyres than the person they are giving advice to. Or maybe it was poor advice from the guy at the bike or tyre shop who has a favourite tyre but did not bother figuring out whether that particular tyre was the right one for the customer’s needs. Sadly, this is more common than might be suspected. Of course, it might just be that the rider thinks that stickier is better, when for their style of riding they are not even going to exploit the grip available from a Sport Touring tyre.

For the average rider things are not helped by the amount of choice available to them and the ranges of tyres do not just cover the usual categories such as Sport Touring, Supersport, Hypersport and Hypersport/Track Day. There are also niche tyres that are designed specifically for supermoto street bikes. Others still for the new breed of Multistrada-type multi-purpose bikes and again others specially designed for 250/400cc sports bikes. As bike design becomes more diverse other types of tyre may be developed in answer to the bike manufacturers, and the bike-buying public’s needs.

The other very important factor that has to be taken into account when choosing tyres is that not only should they be suitable for your style of riding but they also have to be suitable for the bike as well. What is meant by this? Well, just because a tyre is available in the correct sizes for your particular bike doesn’t automatically make that tyre suitable for the bike.

Because each type of tyre is designed to give the optimum handling, response, stability and ride characteristics for its main intended use those very attributes may cause stability or handling problems when fitted on a bike of a completely different style.

Tyre manufacturers go to great lengths to test their various tyres on the vast range of bikes on the market and only if the tyres reach certain performance levels on a particular bike will they give it their approval. If one of their tyres does not appear in their list of recommendations for a certain bike it may be that the performance may not have reached the high levels necessary to achieve full approval. This should come as no real surprise because it would be unreasonable to expect one size of one type of tyre to work on every possible bike it could be fitted on. The huge variety of suspension layouts, frame designs and weight biases can all affect how a tyre performs on different bikes and it is a testament to how well tyre engineers design today’s tyres that they work so well on such a wide range of bikes.

Another reason that a particular type of tyre is not approved for use on a particular bike is that the tyre manufacturer didn’t consider it necessary to test, for example, their Hypersport/Track Day tyres on a bike that was designed for long-distance touring. In this case the tyre manufacturer would have reasoned that no rider of this sort of bike, on which straight-line stability is an important performance consideration, would want to fit a tyre with a more nervous nature that, because of its intended use on fast A-roads and circuits, changes direction quicker than a politician’s opinion.

For these reasons it is always best to seek specialist advice when selecting new tyres. Talk to bike and tyre dealers who know what they are talking about. How do you find out which ones understand tyres? Ask around. It’s like finding a good plumber. People are usually happy to recommend places they’ve received good service. If this fails why not contact the tyre manufacturers? They are the ones who make the tyres and no one knows more than them about which of their tyres would be suitable for your bike and your intended use. You can usually find contact details on their websites and they are more than happy to give you advice, after all, no manufacturer wants their tyres criticised in public when the real problem was that the customer had the wrong type of tyre fitted.

This brings us onto a related matter. As already mentioned, riders tend not to notice their tyres until something happens such as a slide, and then some of these riders are all too quick to blame the tyres when, thanks to the high levels of performance of today’s tyres it is very unlikely to be the tyres fault. Something like an unexpected slide is far more likely to be the result of something on the road surface – gravel, oil, mud – that the rider failed to notice. A slide could also have been the result of not ‘listening’ to what your tyre was telling you. Today’s tyres have such good levels of feedback that they will let you know when they are nearing their cornering limit. This is usually communicated to the rider by small amounts of movement and only if you totally ignore this warning will the tyre go into a bigger slide. When looked at from this point of view is it still the tyre’s fault that it broke away?

Some riders also forget that regular tyre maintenance is vital to the performance of their bike and the single most important piece of maintenance you can carry out is a weekly pressure check on cold tyres. After all, what is the point of having super-trick, multi-adjustable suspension if your tyre’s recommended inflation pressures are not adhered to? It should shock you to hear, but it is far from unusual for some riders not to check their inflation pressures between their bike’s service intervals. Think about it – if average service intervals are 4,000-6,000 miles this may mean that these tyre’s pressures are only checked once a year when the bike visits the dealer’s workshop! And it is often these riders who complain that their tyres are not lasting very long or that their bike has poor stability so it will be the last time they use that manufacturer’s tyres. Correct tyre inflation pressures will save you money - under-inflated tyres return poor tread life and fuel consumption will suffer. Under-inflating also reduces your bike’s stability performance, slows down steering response and by closing up the tread grooves reduces the tyres ability to disperse water.

While you’re taking a minute or two to check your tyre pressures it doesn’t take much extra effort to inspect your tyres for any damage in the way of cuts, cracking or puncturing objects.

If it still seems like too much hard work just think about this – these simple bits of maintenance may save your life because the only thing between your bike and the road is your tyres and it is your responsibility to ensure you have the correct tyres and that they are maintained correctly.

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