Folks complain all the time about how modern "soft" tires evaporate on them in a year or so of use.     For example, this tire is two Dragons old and it went up to the Dragon with more than half the original tread left on it.  Look at it now, pitiful ain't it?




I can now sympathise with this "they wear out way too soon" point of view as I just spent 7 days in the NC/Tennessee mountains and I watched my new Dunlop TourMax rear tire simply evaporate more & more each day due to the hot pavement.  The rest of the guys saw it too, so it isn't just me saying this.

The "soft" tire slipped under hard throttle when leaned over exiting the apex of the sharp turns, so not only did the modern rubber compound "soft" tire not wear worth beans, it had relatively poor cornering traction was while doing so.  Yes, the hot pavement was a factor here, but still the "soft" compound rear tire did not perform near as well as the front tire did.

The front tire I was running was a 1970's BMW hard rubber touring tread pattern as cloned by Chen Shin as their 3.5" x 19 C-287 touring style.  This tire did NOT evaporate although the main braking forces used on this trip were mostly on the front tire.  It always gripped, and has done so on 5 Dragon trips so far (one of which was misty rainy some of the time and we rode the Dragon with the pavement wet).


 

Having just completed an active comparison on modern "soft" rubber tires and the old hard rubber tires for grip and wear ON A SAVAGE this leads me to believe the old hard rubber tires are more than sufficient on cornering and braking grip for a Savage and they offer greatly increased wear life on our smaller, lighter Savage motorcycle.

So I went looking for a replacement same same C-287 hard rubber tire and I find that they are worst than finding hen's teeth any more.   Finally located some (they were on close out sale) and I bought 2 of them.   Delivered to my door, both of them for $77 which is less than I would have paid for any one tire of the soft rubber styles being sold nowdays.  

This is $24 a tire type pricing, which is pretty durn good for a long lasting good gripping tire.  First tire costs you $24 to ship, but second tire only added $5 to the party, so buying two at a time was the best way to get say 10-15 years worth of new front rubber.

(store your tires in an air conditioned closet back behind the shoe rack and rotate them a quarter turn every time you happen to notice them)

If interested, here is a link to the 3.5"x 19 C-287 sale.

OUT OF STOCK NOW -- WILL NOT GET ANY MORE EVER

http://www.cyclepartsnation.com/pages/CustomCatalog/Product/34655

 
Chen Shin are cheap Chinese tires, it is amazing what they can produce at a given price.

Trick is to get hold of them in the USA at that low price -- lots of hands in the mix puts the price right back on up there.

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Now for a new hard rubber rear tire.    I looked and I thought and I looked and I thought.   There aren't many choices out there in 15" hard rubber tires.   Finally found this Nexen 165/80-15 which looks fairly good to me at $57 taxed and shipped to my local WalMart for local pickup.

 
Car tires are not recommended by SuzukiSavage.com because of two known instances (different list members) that a BF Goodrich Radial TA 155/80-15 tire broke one of the steel wire beads while inflating the bead seating step on mounting the tire.

One list member (me) has a very pretty inch and a half scar on his left wrist where the jagged edged Goodyear radial TA bead cut him deeply as it exploded off the rim during the inflation part of mounting when the bead broke on me.

Obviously you are confused by the configuration of the tire shown in the picture and you might think it was a car tire, but be assured that it is only in your imagination -- nobody would actually be that foolish as to do that again.

Hard rubber tires of size 165/80-15 require a lot of extensive work to clear enough room in your wheel well for them to fit and they really are not worth the effort to do (unless you happen to do that mod years ago and actually put a whole bunch of Dragon miles on a hard rubber rear tire, enough to learn the ins and outs of them).

It's funny, 20-40% (two of us) of the rear tires on the Dragon runs on all the years we have been going have been those hard rubber tires.  I put a normal bike tire back on when my first hard rubber rear ate its tube up and the replacement hard rubber tire blew a bead when mounting as I had very limited time at that point to get ready for the Dragon, now that the soft bike tire is gone I am going back to the longer lasting hard rubber tire.

Hard rubber rear tires have yet to wear out on a Savage, under inflation and tube failure have killed off all these tires before they ever got over half worn out (at 18-20,000 miles or thereabouts).   Hard rubber rear tires last so long you tend to forget they are even back there.

 
Yes, they are wider.   But tickle your imagination a bit and run those two flat center sections back into just one center section and then the overall profile would look just about like a normal bike tire.   Flat is only there when you are running bolt up right, when leaned over your bike sees a rounded corner section as it normally sees.

Although MMRanch ran himself one with really really square corners for a lot of years and he seemed to have no real issues in doing so ....

 
Look at the tread pattern for sipes (tiny slits in the center of the thread forms).   These were used back in the hard rubber days to add additional traction grip surfaces and add some more flexibility to the hard rubber threads.   Sipes are present on the right hand side of tire, are worn down past the roots on the left side of tire (I lean and brake more on right hand turns compared to left hand turns I guess).

 



Can you get fooled and perhaps buy another soft rubber tire that looks kinda like a hard rubber design?  Perhaps, but look for the TOURING or HIGH MILEAGE designation when you go looking -- the touring people value mileage out of a tire and get all pissed when they get a soft gummy tire that wears out too quickly.

 
Yes, you can get what you are willing to pay for -- Metzler 880's will set you back over $130 a tire and you might get 18,000 miles out of a set.  Metz touring tires seem to be old style hard rubber tires, judging from the way they wear.   European touring bikes (especially German touring bikes) have always had very good tires that come stock on them.

Pirelli 66's do well enough, as do Dunlops -- fairly good cost per mile but you are back into modern soft rubber compound tires now and on a hot road they too will wear more than you would like.

IRC tires are poor on handling and only low average on tread life.  Somebody who only putts around town will likely still like them.

My real issue is that I only get 1-2 summers out of a standard motorcycle tire and I don't want to pay $300+ a set for good gripping long wearing tires.  The yearly amortized Metz tire cost alone would functionally double my yearly Dragon Run vacation costs.  

However, I would pay $80 total for a full set of tires and get similar grip and mileage out of them and I would ride along for 5 years or so thinking that was a better deal.

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Well, I am back to looking for front tires again, the Cyclepartsnation people called me back and said their warehouse is out of stock on the Cheng Shin C-287's and are not looking to order any more.  Cheng Shin has shifted production and they only makes offroad tires now.

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Hard rubber tires are still available, from Dunlop, for $89- $110 a tire, these are mainly intended to "look right" on a restored older motorcycle.

Remaining sources for hard rubber tires are the dual sports tires from Shinko and others -- a little bit too cobby looking for my taste.


           the front tire search continues ....

 
what about the $60 Duro 296's

http://www.bikebandit.com/duro-hf296a-motorcycle-tire