Sent the gf down to my local bike guys to get some new tires fitted and told her to just make sure it's the 140/80 and whatever it is at the front, can't remember.

We decided to go for the 880. I had an extended ride on the bike with the OEM tires and I was aware of heavy steering around corners, I really had to use a lot of handlebar pressure to get around slow corners and I was hoping for an improvement.

Anyhoo she phoned me from the store and they said they could get the tires in and gave us a pretty decent price but they said the rear was a few millimetres wider. I told her whatever, just make sure it's the 140/80, I told her to ask them but I just couldn't get a straight answer, they didn't say it was a 150/80 they went on as if it was some type os slightly different ME880.

I've been away for a week so just had a chance to test them today, first thing I noticed was that it *was* a 150/80, which kinda pi55ed me off at the time, but I took it for a spin and I was very pleased with the handling, it felt completely neutral, no handlebar pressure needed around slow corners at all, just a small shift in body weight. Unlike the Battlax45's on my GS, it did not track around corners like it was on rails, but as I said it was completely neutral.

OK so I'm happy with the final result, but now I'm wondering if the 150/80 ME880 on the rear is going to cause me any problems. Should wear them out in 18 months. OEMs lasted a year, but these ones have deep tread.

yes just keep an eye on the sidewalls ,if no groves are forming your good.

Awrighty, no problem with clearance, a good 8 mmm on each side and seems like plenty of room to the swing arm pivot.

Coupla questions though. The shop inflated the front tyre to 35psi which I reduced to 30, and they had the rear tyre at 36 which I took down to 34. The rider is 65kg. These are close to recommended pressures, however I was wondering seeing as the ME880's are so popular if someone here could tell me if there is a reason the shop might have inflated them over pressure, especially the front.

The tyres are tubeless, I don't know if the ME880 only comes as a TL tyre or if they make a slightly different tyre for TL? I see that putting a tube on a tubeless tyres can build up a bit extra heat and maybe that is why the rear was over inflated.

Anyway it's handling great with the pressures back to normal pressure so just want to check that's the right thing to do with this particular tyre.

Oh yeah the rear tyre DOM was 0615 so that's about 2 years and 5 months old, they seem OK and we should wear them out in 18 months by which time they'll be 4 years old. Hope that's OK/

Check and see if those PSI's are what the tire says is acceptable. The shop probably inflated them to the tire's specs rather than the bike's.

Tires are made to fit specific size/width rims, and on that "recommended" width rim the tread has the proper shape that it was designed for.  It is acceptable to mount the tire on a rim that is a bit wider or narrower.....however the profile of the tread changes as the sidewalls are moved in or out beyond what is recommended.  When you mount the tire on a narrower rim than is recommended - the sidewalls are pinched in and the tread profile becomes rounder, and the tire will have a narrower contact patch and could have accelerated wear on the center of the tire....and the sides of the tread will roll over onto the side of the tire where you will never lean over far enough to use it.  When you mount a tire on a wider rim than is recommended, the tread profile is flattened out, and the sides of the tire may wear faster, and the tire could hydroplane easier in wet weather.  A "tall" tire generally has a wider range of approved fitment than a short sidewall allows.....and generally the taller profile tires are more "vintage" and designed to fit on narrower rims.

The 150/80-15 tire you chose is supposed to be mounted on a rim that is between 3.00" - 4.25" wide, and it is not supposed to be used on the narrower 2.75" rim on the Savage.  Your tread profile is rounder than the tire would prefer, and you likely have a very round looking tread profile across the tire.  A 140/90-15 tire is approved for use on a 2.75 rim - however that is the narrowest rim it can be mounted on.  A 130/90-15 tire can fit a rim between 2.50" - 3.50" wide




Is it OK to continue to use the 150/80?  Probably - but the performance and tread life most likely won't be as good as it would have been on the width rim it was designed for.

There have been 2 tire discussion threads about the issue - but they do fall down the page some when nobody posts anything new.

Here is the "New Tire" thread:
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1448021014

Here is the thread for Cafe' bikes.....this discussion has some useful information about tires that are too wide - but I am trying to keep this as a "Cafe" only thread - so that the common practice of putting a 130/70-18 tire on a 2.50" rim isn't continued...the tire is just too wide for that rim.
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1435340395

OK thanks for that chart Dave, I have seen one of those threads when I did my forum search but I did not come across the one with the chart. I find it very difficult to search the forum so I use the google trick of site:suzukisavage.com search terms here which works well.

Inspired by your chart I took my GS500 and S40 and lined them up as best I could and took a shot of the tyre profiles. I'm amazed that the S40 only had a 2.75 rim! The GS has a 3.5 rim and a 130/70 rear tyre.

However after drawing up the profiles as best I could the 150/80 on the S40 and the 130/70 on the GS look very similar. I'll nevertheless keep a close eye on how it wears.

Also I note that a gps check of the speedo on the S40 shows that it now reads accurately to within 0.5 km/h whereas it used to be 5 km/h under. The front tyre is the standard 100/90

How come the chart above says that a 2.75 rim should use a standard tyre is a 120/90 but the S40 comes with a recommended 140/80?

 We did speed tests this past weekend and 140/90 is by far the most accurate.

 3 different speed identifiers proved the on-board speedometer to be most accurate with a 140/90.  Although all speeds were a maximum of 65mph.