Ironically.....it is a year after I replaced the rear tire before a trip to Texas - and now the front tire needs replaced before our this years trip to Texas! The front tire has some tread left - but it is worn in a way that makes the bike steer poorly. You need to apply a lot of pressure on the bars to keep it in a turn....it steers very stiffly.

The rear tire lasted 6,773 miles - while this front lasted 9,120. The rear tire I installed a year ago has 3,676 and likely has another 3,000 miles left (there is a new set of Dunlop Roadsmart 4 tires sitting on the shelf to be installed as a pair as soon as the rear Continental wears out).

So I wanted a front tire to last me for the next 3,000 miles and figured I would buy a Shinko but when I looked for a tire I found Chapmoto has a Dunlop RoadSport 2 on sale for $79.67 and I bought that tire. It has a lot less grooves than I am used to seeing in a Sport Touring tire - but I avoid riding in the rain when possible and it will be fine for the remaining life of the rear Continental. (It could be that spending twice as much money for tires really isn't necessary and the Dunlop tires might work fine for me). A new set of Dunlop Roadsmart 4 tires lists for $449......a new set of Dunlop Roadsport 2 tires lists for $192. I also just saw that I can buy a new set of Roadsmart 3 tires for $250! Maybe paying a premium price for the latest version of a tire isn't necessary.....especially now that I own a the NoMar tire mounting machine!

 

Maybe paying a premium price for the latest version of a tire isn't necessary.....especially now that I own a the NoMar tire mounting machine!

I was going to suggest you bring the bike to my place, and we could try out my new Rabaconda tire machine. But you went out and bought a NoMar...

FWIW, I am really really happy with the Bridgestone T32 tires. Smooth. Good grip and feel. They are my top choice, even over the Conti's.

Chris

 

You don't want to be 1000 miles from home when the cords show. But also know it is not the rubber which holds your tire together but the cords. Heck, you don't want to be 50 miles from home when the cords show.

In my experience after the tread is gone your time is short when a different color rubber appears. They use a different rubber to hold the cords than is used for tread. Cord rubber wears very fast. Yet another rubber lines the inside of the tire specially formulated to hold air, no other tire rubber holds air.

 

We aren't riding the F800GT the 1,300 miles to Texas and back to KY.....we are towing the bike in a trailer. We will be riding for Mon-Fri everyday around the Texas Hill Country. I anticipate we will ride 1,000 - 1,200 miles over the week.

I feel good that I have replaced the tire - I would have worried the entire week about the condition of the tire......now I won't have to worry and I can spend more time enjoying the scenery.

 

Oh heck you had a lot of life left in that tire!

I agree that you do not want to start a 5 day trip to Texas with that tire. Could easily be 1000 miles there, 1000 miles back. OK, that would be 400 miles/day average with a rest day in the middle so maybe I am estimating long?

I need to clean up and post a video of me mounting a tire last week. Friend wasn't a very good cameraman but did OK. Then cut open his Michelin Pilot Road 4 I took off. The tire was so flimsy I had trouble breaking the bead. Sidewall simply folded making it hard to push the bead down and off the raised ridge on the rim.

 

I cut a cross section out of the tire that had 6,700 miles on it, and had a flat spot down the center. I would have ridden on this tire a little bit longer on the local roads - as it appeared to have some life left. I was too nervous to take the bike down to Texas next week and ride it double for 5 days.

The results are what I sort of expected - there was very little rubber in the center. The flat spot doesn't look too severe from the outside - but the casing underneath is arched and the result is very little rubber down the center even though the grooves on both sides still show some rubber left. There is only about 3/32" of rubber over the steel cord in the center of the tire tread......it was definitely time to take this tire out of service.

Be careful when you are riding on tire with no tread depth indicator in the center - it is very easy to ride too long on these tires!

 

I just turned 66 and I hope to have another 15-20 years of riding left - and with my retirement beginning in 3 months I plan on wearing out a lot of tires in the coming years. I believe I will need to mount/balance 2-3 sets of tires a year.

I mount my tires by hand using plastic rim protectors and tire levers - tires with stiff casings are always a challenge to mount and I always worry about scratching my pretty rims.

Buying a second set of wheels does make sense........however I chose a different route and just ordered a Cycle Hill by No-Mar tire changer. It was about $550 with shipping.......at $40 each to mount/balance at the local dealer I will have it paid for after mounting 14 tires! I can charge my friends/neighbors to mount their tires and help pay for this thing a bit quicker.

 

Considering your planned amount of riding and tire changing, I think investing in a No-Mar tire changer is a smart idea, Thumpin. Plus, you will suddenly start acquiring new motorcycle owning friends. Just make sure they bring over beer when they ask you to help them change their tires using your new machine. []

 

You don't have a center groove to measure with, but the dirty area covering the center of the tire and extending out to the nearest grooves shows that those grooves will serve to give you an indication of wear.

Tread life is hard to compare between one rider and another. Your road surface is different than mine. You are riding two up. And you probably accelerate and brake differently than I do. All factor into how fast your tire wears. Plus, there's the mental aspect. What do I feel comfortable with...and especially with my wife on the back?

The other factor is that you either have to plan on the full round-trip mileage, or to get the tire changed on the road somewhere.

James (jtvisions) convinced me last summer to buy a second set of rims. So I'm riding on my "local" set of tires now with about 10K on some Dunlop RS4s...and I have a second set of wheels with Continental RA3s sitting in the garage as my "road trip" set. I'll ride the local set down to the last bit of life in them. And when a trip out of the area comes up, I have fresh rubber available.

Chris

 

If you ride 2 up so often it might be worth getting the GT version of the rear tire. That should keep the heat down when it's under load and slow the wear.

I just had a set of the Road Attack 3 deliver this weekend. I'll install in a couple months and really hope they do better mileage than you got. They will replace Road 5. I ran road 3, 4, and two sets of 5, and in all cases got way more mileage than you were talking about. I put my current set of road 5 on last June, then headed out on a 5,500 mile, 16-day trip. I've put another 2500 or so on them since then, but they're only about 3/4 worn. I'm replacing them early because I have another big trip planned for June this year.

Sent from my SM-G981U1 using Tapatalk

 

If you ride 2 up so often it might be worth getting the GT version of the rear tire. That should keep the heat down when it's under load and slow the wear.

If that were true the GT variant would have a higher DOT load rating. It does not.

I have come to think Bridgestone/Continental/Michelin GT (or Pirelli A-spec, or Metzeler HWM) is just a means of offering a stiffer tire without the complications of advertising and differentiating another tire model.

On a small sample size of 1 I am guessing Bridgestone changes the tread formula between T30 Evo and T30 Evo GT. Not the best data point to use a discontinued tire but I got 8000 miles on the front from my first T30 Evo GT then purchased (2) T30 Evo on closeout which only delivered 4550 and 4600 miles. Riding until the tread disappears.

Previously got 9500 miles from a front T31 GT. Replaced T30 Evo with a T32 GT on Sunday hoping for tread life similar to the discontinued T31 GT. The T31 GT was the only front tire I have used in 82,000 miles that did not sour the last portion of its life.

Have not found any tread life difference using Michelin Pilot Road 4 GT vs not-GT. I don't like the PR4GT on the front but love stiff T31GT front paired with soft PR4GT rear. Usually 10,000-11,000 miles on PR4GT rear.

I usually run 5 front tires to every 4 rear tires.

 

It has been my experience that modern radial tires will wear very rapidly as they near the end of their tread. Most manufacturers recommend that you replace a rear tire once it reaches a tread depth of 2mm. But I agree with you that some tire tread designs without tread in the center of the tire are hard to measure. The safe thing to do is to replace the tire once you start getting nervous regarding the look of the tire's wear. Besides, who wants to ride around while worrying if you will be riding on the tire's casing and need to replace the tire immediately. Also, you will be really worried about running into wet weather and the loss of traction. Replacing the tire will make your ride much more enjoyable. Having said all that, it does look to me like your tire would go another 1K miles and I wouldn't worry about riding locally, while keeping an eye on the wear pattern. Those tread grooves near the center of the tire look fairly decent to me. However, if you plan a long trip with a passenger, it would be well worth your peace of mind to replace it.

BTW, coincidentally this weekend I replaced the 3.5"X19" Dunlop K70 rear tire on my Royal Enfield Bullet. (The same type of tire that came stock on my 1971 Triumph Bonneville. ) That tire only lasted 3,500 miles by the time it reached its center-line groove wear bars. [] But it does have good traction considering how narrow the tire is. []

 

We are just about to begin riding season again in Kentucky, and I was hopeful to get another 1,000 miles out of the Road Attack 3 - but I just replaced it with a new one I purchased a few months ago. I may have been able to get another 1,000 - 1,500 gentle miles on the tire - but it is hard to tell for sure as there is no wear indicator or tread groove in the center of the tire. My wife and I are going to Texas to ride in the Hill Country in a couple weeks, and the tire "may" have been able to survive the trip - we will trailer the bike down and then ride for 5 days around the local roads......but riding double on a tire at the end of it's useful life when you are 1,300 miles from home just didn't seem like a good gamble.

The rear tire only had 6,700 miles of riding and I was hoping to get far more mileage from it. Initially the tire appeared to wear slowly - but 2 trips to ride double in Ozark Mountains in Arkansas proved to be very hard on the rear tire. The local roads are tar and chip and the aggregate they use is about the size of a pea and very sharp and jagged. Riding double on that pavement really made noticeable changes to the tread - the surface of the rubber became angular and scuffy from all the sharp edges of the stones picking away at the rubber.

It appears that the number of miles I ride double is likely to prevent me from ever getting high mileage out of a rear tire. We will not be going to Arkansas this year - so maybe that will help extend the life of this new tire! The front tire has about 5,500 miles on it and is still looking good.

The photo shows the flat center of the tire. It is a bit hard to tell - but when the tire was dismounted and I pushed on the center of the tire....I estimate there is maybe 1/8" of tread rubber left on the tire. I will cut the tire across the tread to see - I will post a photo of what I find.

 

I got the front Road Attack 3 mounted on Friday and was able to get a couple hundred miles in over the weekend. Riding on brand new tires is always a joy....the bike feels brand new!

 

That's what I saw at the time, and I thought it strange too. The GT version is still priced like that for the front, but is also listed as out of stock. The price is now $70 for the front.

I'm pretty much convinced to stay with the Continentals, so for me, the price of a Bridgestone is a moot point. On a previous bike, I went through just about every tire that was sold for it. I thought I was doing the forum members a favor by trying them all and giving them feedback. In the end, I went back to the first tire I swapped out for the OEMs. The other tires weren't bad...but they cost more and gave no better (and possibly less) performance.

 

T30 Evos were $170/set on closeout from Cycle Gear a few weeks ago. My Yamaha dealer bought a bunch selling for $150/set. Rocky Mountain has long been an excellent source of T30 and T31, the first place I look.

Seems odd you show the front tire costing more than the rear. That is not my observation.

 

"I've tried the OEM Metzeler Z8, two sets of Metzeler Roadtec 01s, two sets of Dunlop Roadsmart IIIs and now two sets of Continental Roadattack III tires. Out of the group, I'll stick with the Continental RAIIIs. They are confidence inspiring. They warm up immediately. And it looks like they will last well.

Chris"

so could one safely say you're not a Michelin man ?

 

so could one safely say you're not a Michelin man ?

Hah! I can see where you'd come to that conclusion, but it isn't that at all. I just like to get some value for my money. I've never seen anyone walk up to my bike, look at the sidewall on my tires and comment on the name written there.

I just updated my Tire Prices spreadsheet. I do it a couple times a year because I go through a couple sets of tires a year. And rebates change through the summer, which changes the sort order on the spreadsheet.

Here's a snapshot of it.

Right now, for the next few days, the Dunlop Roadsmart 3 is a phenomenal value. Buying a complete set of those tires, is less than the cost of the Michelin Road 5 rear tire alone. And I found the Dunlop RS3 tire good enough to buy it twice. I probably would've kept buying it, but I wanted to try the Continental RA3.

I've ridden a F800GT with the Michelin Road 5 tires installed. It was a great tire, but not anything better than the Dunlop, or Metzeler or Continental tires I've also tried. Turn in was different, but neither good nor bad in my opinion. It just was.

Look at the Owner Ratings. Granted that all the reviews are a little bogus...the owner rated the tires with maybe 100 miles on them. Of course he likes them. What would you expect? But the new Pirelli Angel GT II is rated at 4.2 by owners, verses the older version being rated at 4.8. Hmmm... And the Michelin Road 5 is rated at 4.7, while the Continental RA 3 is rated as a 4.9. The same prejudices are there for both tires, but for some reason the owners who bought the Conti's like them marginally more while the tire costs less. Add in the normal summer rebate, and the Conti RA3 is also a great value.

I rode in the summer of 2019 with some extremely fast riders with the Continental RA3 tires. They were confidence inspiring. My "chicken strips" were about a quarter inch...almost non-existent. I can't figure out why I'd want to spend more money to buy a tire that won't perform any better.

Chris

 

Comparing tires is both meaningless...and meaningful. It's meaningless in that the kind of mileage I get, won't necessarily be what you'll get if you live in Texas. Our temperatures are cooler, and our road surface is probably different than what you'd find riding in Texas.

But it is meaningful when comparing tires that have been used on the same bike on the same roads. This tire has 9000 miles on it now, and looks good for another 2-3000 miles. It'll get flatter than some will accept, but I'll keep it on till I need to change it.

I've tried the OEM Metzeler Z8, two sets of Metzeler Roadtec 01s, two sets of Dunlop Roadsmart IIIs and now two sets of Continental Roadattack III tires. Out of the group, I'll stick with the Continental RAIIIs. They are confidence inspiring. They warm up immediately. And it looks like they will last well.

Chris

 

I have these tyres on my F800GT, but not the GT version of the tyres, just the standard sizes and standard version. I've had them on the bike for approx 2000-3000 miles now. I generally only ride when the weather is good, and my journeys are mostly for fun. The bike handles great with these tyres, I feel confident on the bike to lean over to the edge of the rear tyre. Handling and stability are great. I've also been caught out in the rain a few times, and I didn't really notice any difference in grip or handling, but when its wet, I take it easy anyway.
I would agree that this tyre is on the sporty side, and this suites me very well, as I don't do a lot of mileage, and when I'm out I like to have fun. I generally ride the bike on well surfaced country roads, out of town. So if you like enjoying good amounts of lean in the corners, you'll like these tyres. Powering through and out of corners is fine too, I've not noticed any issues doing this. I think the compound of the tyre on the edges is definitely softer than the middle, as my read tyre on the sides looks worn, but still has a good profile.
Braking, I've not had any problems too. I have progressive springs in the front forks, and dive is reduced considerably, so I can brake hard and late if I want to. Generally I don't brake so hard, but with the springs the bike doesn't rock when I release the brakes and tip the bike in. So I can extract yet more fun from the bike. Comfort hasn't noticably reduced with the springs either, but they are harder of course.
Anyway, if you are into sporty riding, enjoying lean in the corners, and nice neutral handling that gives you the confidence to be able to lean over to the edge, you'll like these tyres.

 

Time will tell what kind of mileage these are capable of. Continental claims the RA3 are supposed to provide more mileage than the Road Attack 2 or 2 Evo.

 

The Continental road attack tyres are known to be a soft compound and don't get a lot of mileage, especially if you are frequently 'enjoying' the bike. The GT version of a tyre usually is for a stiffer sidewall on heavier bikes which can carry more weight, it may be a bit too stiff for the GT as it is not that heavy and the rear is relatively light.