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