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07 R12R - Anyone using a non touring rear tire?

fletchdude

New member
I want to get some new rubber and it looks like the rear is a "B" rated tire which has a stiffer side wall to handle extra weight, bags etc. At least this is the case for the Michelin Pilot Road 3's which I'm getting. I'd say 90% of the time I'll be riding this bike without bags and I'm am only 160 lbs on a fat day. I was advised to get the non-B tire as it would handle better in this configuration. Before I piss off the parts guy with an unusual order, has anyone else done this?

Fletch
 
Me (but I may have made the suggestion to you..) The B tire makes sense on a fully loaded RT.. not so much on an R.

FWIW: Michelin also now is offering a "Trail" version of the Pilot Road-3 - it has a wider hard-rubber band in the center. Dunno why they called it "Trail". This might help prevent the ridges formed at the transition between the hard/soft rubber on the stock PR-3.

More info: http://www.michelinmotorcycle.com/index.cfm?event=pilotroad3trial - seems targeted at GS riders who ride mostly on-road, but can't see why they wouldn't work on an R12R. Reviews I found of them were pretty uniformly positive.
 
The Metzeler Z8's that came on my new R12R are pretty incredible. Smooth, predictable, good in the wet, and supposedly gets decent milage too. They actually feel sticky enough for some track action.
 
I have the Michelin Pilot Power 2, but the threes are out. Get them, they are GREAT!
 
Thanks for the advice. It looks like the Michelin "Trail" tires are slightly more narrow than stock for our bike. I just ordered a set of Pilot Road 3s. I'm going to try and mount these myself Sunday. My local club is having a shock set up tech session at Morton's. I just put on a set of Hyper Pro shocks and am looking forward to this. Stuart says I can use their tire machine while there. I've never mounted tires before but if the GS guys can do it on the side of a mountain how hard can it be in a certified shop (as long as I have adult supervision)?

Cheers, Fletch
 
I have the Michelin Pilot Power 2, but the threes are out. Get them, they are GREAT!

+ Pilot Power aka The Canyon Tire

Great tire on the lighter sporty R1200R, ran quite a few sets, even did back to back IBA rides to Chicago from LA in two days on them, got me back home too. I was surprised since these are more like sport bike or track day tires, but did great for a long ride too. Very confidence inspiring in the twisties sticking like glue, more so than any sport touring tire IMO. Love the way the bike falls into a turn, linear and smooth.

Just fine in the rain.


IronButt_-X2.jpg





And not bad on gravel while going over the Rockies on the Alpine loop


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Thanks for the advice. It looks like the Michelin "Trail" tires are slightly more narrow than stock for our bike.

Huh? They are Pilot Road 3's, with a change in rubber compound distribution. Other then that - size for size identical to the non-trail PR-3.

MoreFletch said:
I just ordered a set of Pilot Road 3s. I'm going to try and mount these myself Sunday. My local club is having a shock set up tech session at Morton's. I just put on a set of Hyper Pro shocks and am looking forward to this. Stuart says I can use their tire machine while there. I've never mounted tires before but if the GS guys can do it on the side of a mountain how hard can it be in a certified shop (as long as I have adult supervision)?

Cheers, Fletch
Jim, this is Saturday? I'll be turning my cell phone off.. :)
 
Thanks for the advice. It looks like the Michelin "Trail" tires are slightly more narrow than stock for our bike. I just ordered a set of Pilot Road 3s. I'm going to try and mount these myself Sunday. My local club is having a shock set up tech session at Morton's. I just put on a set of Hyper Pro shocks and am looking forward to this. Stuart says I can use their tire machine while there. I've never mounted tires before but if the GS guys can do it on the side of a mountain how hard can it be in a certified shop (as long as I have adult supervision)?

Cheers, Fletch


It's really simple. Lube is your friend. I use a silicone spray when re-installing. I spooned on a front PR3 to the ST a few days ago and spent my usual 15 minutes on it. It took me longer to balance it and I barely finished even one beer :drink

Do you have someway of popping the bead? I used one of the bead popping wedges that you drive between the tire and rim and popped it off pretty quick.
 
It's really simple. Lube is your friend. I use a silicone spray when re-installing. I spooned on a front PR3 to the ST a few days ago and spent my usual 15 minutes on it. It took me longer to balance it and I barely finished even one beer :drink

Do you have someway of popping the bead? I used one of the bead popping wedges that you drive between the tire and rim and popped it off pretty quick.

I will be doing this at a local BMW shop that's kind enough to let us do our own maintenance so I will be using their tire changer. I have some silicone spray somewhere around the house. Thanks for the tip.
 
BMW Motorcycle Magazine ran a tire analysis of many "sport" tires. Three won Editor's Pick.

The Bridgestone Battlax S20 is rated best dry and wet. The Continental SportAttack 2 won best dry (my next).

Metzler Sportec M5 Interact is the third "for active riders" and "all-round performance".
 
BMW Motorcycle Magazine ran a tire analysis of many "sport" tires. Three won Editor's Pick.

The Bridgestone Battlax S20 is rated best dry and wet. The Continental SportAttack 2 won best dry (my next).

Metzler Sportec M5 Interact is the third "for active riders" and "all-round performance".
One can only wonder about what parameters were used for the selection. Feel? Wet? Dry? Both? Wear? Make me look thin? Perchance were the tire makers advertising in the issue? It's certainly the first time I've heard of the Conti SA-2 beating the Pilot Road dry or wet (even though I liked the original Conti Sport Attack, they were a bit spooky wet, and wore rather quickly into an uncomfortable profile.)

One good thing - we're all benefiting from the competition between tire manufacturers to sell us tires.. they do just keep getting better.

My tire priorities are: traction (wet, dry, cold, cold and wet) and wear. A distant third comes in "feel" since that changes over the life of the tire as the shape changes. They are only new until the first revolution of the wheel.. For me the PR-III works for my priorities. Dunno if it has the best traction over all conditions, but it has more then adequate traction for me, I've never managed to get it to slip except when going through oil being sprayed on my rear tire by a punctured oil-filter (in the entrance to a sharp S curve.. somehow the bike stayed up.)

I rarely look at things like magazine tire tests since I know (from having been an editor/publisher once in my life) that advertising influences editorial. I can't remember Motorcycle Consumer News ever doing a tire comparo - but it would be interesting if they could come up with a real testing regime that would legitimize this sort of comparison (it's easy to put a bike on a dyno and compare HP, but it's not at all easy to measure traction coefficients on pavement under varying environmental conditions.) If you remember all the popular moto magazines from the 70's (when I used to really pore over these) - "The XYZ500-MKIII is the best in it's class!" followed by a full page ad for the XYZ500, which was in the class of advertising in this issue.. :)

YMMV, and I think we've gotten WAY off-topic here.. :blush
 
They used an R1200R and the article lays down the parameters they used. I believe the article, having read it, but you can believe what you want.

They list touring tires as well.
 
They used an R1200R and the article lays down the parameters they used. I believe the article, having read it,

I thought they did a good job on the article.
Don should have read the article before bashing the magazine.
 
You know, it's really easy to go to NAPA and get some REAL tire mounting lube.

Silicone spray, WD-40, etc., are wrong for this application.
 
I thought they did a good job on the article.
Don should have read the article before bashing the magazine.

Lee, sorry if it seemed like I was bashing the magazine. I wasn't.. what I was trying to point out is why I don't pay a lot of attention to these sort of articles when it comes time to spend my money. My priorities are undoubtedly different from the factors the magazine article evaluates. One of my top three priorities is tire longevity, and how it feels as it wears. Without doing some really extended testing I rather doubt if any magazine test is going to include this factor. Some tires are known to get annoyingly loud when they wear (including Pilot-Road-II and III's), that's another factor that I might find someone in a forum commenting on, but in a magazine review? Doubtful. I've been known to replace tires that look perfectly good to most riders because as they wore I didn't like the tire feel (uneven wear side to side on some tires) and/or couldn't stand the noise coming from the tire.

That's me. If the article gives you enough info to choose a tire - good for it. I'd prefer to keep an eye on forum posts by people who I know have some of the same concerns I do about how a tire performs long-term. Are the tires they picked good tires? I'm sure they are - there are very few bad tires around, the internet and rapid spread of experience by riders has brought that to us. Bad tires are quickly flushed from the marketplace when people don't buy them based on other riders experience.
 
Wrong again, Don. The magazine article considers wear and feel on each tire. It even lists them for each!

You need to read this article, in order to post. You are not coming off knowledgeable here.
 
I used the white tire lube that the dealer uses. Its in a gallon tub with soft applicator brush. Seem to work just fine. I now have fresh PR3's.

Interesting lesson learned. The bike is five years old with original tires. The front tire came off fairly easy, the rear was a real PITA. I kept breaking the bead and then it would re-seat before I could get it off the rim, and this was using a professional tire changing machine. The shop mechanic and service manager had the same trouble with it. We assumed its because the tire was at least five yeas old, most likely older since tires are manufactured earlier than the day the bike is sold. The bike is an '07 and only had 5800 miles on it when I bought it last summer. This tells me it had a lot of time sitting around dry rotting, probably under inflated. I'm guessing these are indications of what happens to neglected tires, i.e improper inflation and leaving them on the bike for too long a period. Not that it matters but the tire was a Continental. According to the staff Connie's and Bridgestone's tend to be more difficult to remove.
 
I used the white tire lube that the dealer uses. Its in a gallon tub with soft applicator brush. Seem to work just fine. I now have fresh PR3's.

Interesting lesson learned. The bike is five years old with original tires. The front tire came off fairly easy, the rear was a real PITA. I kept breaking the bead and then it would re-seat before I could get it off the rim, and this was using a professional tire changing machine. The shop mechanic and service manager had the same trouble with it. We assumed its because the tire was at least five yeas old, most likely older since tires are manufactured earlier than the day the bike is sold. The bike is an '07 and only had 5800 miles on it when I bought it last summer. This tells me it had a lot of time sitting around dry rotting, probably under inflated. I'm guessing these are indications of what happens to neglected tires, i.e improper inflation and leaving them on the bike for too long a period. Not that it matters but the tire was a Continental. According to the staff Connie's and Bridgestone's tend to be more difficult to remove.
Jim

The rear rim on an R12R has very little drop in the center. My tire guy was cursing a storm up whenever we had to swap out a Continental on it... apparently the bead on them is really strong and tends to snap back into position. On a rim with more drop in the center, once the bead is broken you can push one side of it down into the dropped center of the rim, making the other side easy to get over the lip. Once it's over the lip it's easy to get it off. Just isn't easy at all with Continentals on the R12R rims. The PR2 and PR3 are much easier to get off and on the rear rim.

As far as how old the tire was - look for the DOT date - a 4 digit code inside an oval embossed into the tire. The first two digits are the week of the year, the second two are the year. IE - a tire marked 0101 was made in January of 2001. One marked 1207 - December of 2007. Etc.. I always check the date on new tires I'm installing. I greatly prefer that they be less then 12 months old when put on the bike. Rubber hardening up starts as soon as they come out of the mold (plasticizer evaporates from the rubber.) Having them sit vs riding them doesn't change the rate a lot, but storing them in an area with a high amount of ozone in the air does.. (ozone can come from the brushes on brush type motors sparking..)

Bet it feels like a completely different bike with good rubber and suspension on it finally.
 
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