If you’ve got an older sportbike with 16-inch rims, your tire choices nowadays are rather limited. Yet the right tire can make all the difference in your bike’s handling and safety — in fact, your tires are one of the most important parts of your motorcycle. For that reason, if I’m going to splurge, tires are one place I do it.

Not that these high-quality hoops from Bridgestone are expensive. In fact, they can be found online for about $80-$90 for the front and about $100 for the rear. But they offer proven performance from one of the top tire manufacturers in the world.

My 1985 Honda Nighthawk 700S project bike had a decent set of tires on it when I got it, but they were date-stamped 2016 and I wasn’t terribly happy with their performance when I was sport riding in the canyons. So I ordered up a set of Bridgestone Battlax BT-45s.

Bridgestone describes these bias-ply tires as being designed for mid-sized sport-touring bikes and older sportbikes, so they offer a good balance of tread longevity, grip in a wide range of conditions and sticky sport riding capability. Once scrubbed in, I found them to be very quiet, with a nice rounded profile that offered a neutral feel and easy turn-in, and grip for days. They complement my Nighthawk’s raked-out geometry nicely, giving it a sporting feel that the original designers in the ’80s probably wished they could achieve with the tires of that era.

Bridgestone offers the BT-45s in a wide range of sizes from 16 to 21 inches in the front, and 16 to 18 inches in the rear, to fit just about any small-to-midsize sport tourer or older sportbike like mine.

The best part is, Bridgestone is not forgetting those of us with older bikes. In the works for release soon is an updated Battlax BT-46 tire, and we can’t wait to try it out next!

For more information, see your dealer or visit bridgestonemotorcycletires.com.

Source: RiderMagazine.com

Adventure-bike tires are always a compromise, so they’re often categorized by their intended “mix of usage,” e.g. 50/50 for a tire that is good for someone who rides 50% on-road and 50% off. Know anyone like that? Neither do I, especially among riders who pilot larger ADV machines. For most of us spending even 10% of our time off-road would be a challenge, but few riders want a “90/10” tire that just barely cuts it in the dirt.

We could just run 50/50 tires all of the time, but the good ones wear out too fast, and the bad ones suck on the street. What we really need is a “60/60” tire, one that works 60% as well as a full-on knobby off-road and 60% as well as a sport-touring tire on the street, with the longevity of 90/10 tire on the rear.

After two years of development—a year spent on the aggressive Staggered Step tread pattern and compound alone—Dunlop has plugged the “50/50” hole in its ADV tire lineup with its new Trailmax Mission tires. Using the criteria I suggest above, these are really 60/60 tires, since they deliver close to DOT knobby-like performance off-road and footpeg-dragging levels of grip and stability on the street. They also promise better wear—Dunlop says independently contracted test riders got 8,000 miles out of a rear on a Suzuki V-Strom 1000.

Designed and manufactured at Dunlop’s factory in Buffalo, New York, the Mission’s start with a rugged bias or bias-belted construction rather than radial, since the tread area and sidewalls are a single tough unit and can be thicker to resist cuts and punctures. Construction varies based on fitment—some sizes have reinforcing belts and others don’t depending upon how much load capacity and/or compliance is required—but all can be used with or without tubes.

Some elements of the Mission’s tread design were inspired by the Wildpeak light truck tire from Falken, Dunlop’s sister auto tire company. In combination with the large stepped tread blocks and deep grooves, the Mission’s prominent side lugs shared by the Wildpeak are said to add rigidity and durability in rocky terrain; allow lower pressures off-road with less risk of pinch-flatting; help provide steering stability in sand, mud and gravel surfaces; and help steer the bike out of ruts off-road, even on big ADV bikes. Mounted on my Honda Africa Twin and ridden on rocky, rutted fire roads in the San Bernardino Mountains near lake Arrowhead, California, I found the Trailmax Missions delivered nearly as much traction off-road as a knobby 50/50 competitor on the same bike. That may change in muddy conditions I have yet to ride, when a grooved tire is more likely to pack up than a knobby, but the Missions have wide grooves and a 60/40 land/sea ratio, so they should still do quite well in the sloppy stuff.

Although not as road performance-oriented as Dunlop’s 90/10 Trailsmart radials, after several hundred miles of Interstate, highways, surface street and twisting backroad I found the Trailmax Missions offered all of the grip and stability I could use on the pavement, even with the 21-inch front/18-inch rear combo on my Africa Twin carrying loaded panniers. It helps that Dunlop engineered a specific tread pattern for the 21-inch Mission front, which has larger tread blocks that don’t require hollowing-out to achieve enough grip like the 17- and 19-inch sizes do. The Mission fronts also have a symmetrical tread pattern that helps reduce uneven wear.

Dunlop Trailmax Mission tires are available in a wide size range that covers most ADV bikes, scramblers and crossovers. According to Dunlop, sizes will arrive in phases, with most available in November and the rest landing by January 1, 2020. MSRP ranges from $131.21 to 285.23.

For more information see your dealer or visit dunlopmotorcycletires.com

Source: RiderMagazine.com

When it comes to dual-sport tires, there’s a sliding ratio based on their intended on-road vs. off-road use. Most adventure touring bikes are fitted with 90/10 tires as original equipment, on the assumption (backed up by market research) that most owners do 90 percent or more of their riding on pavement and only about 10 percent off-road.

Such tires typically have large, closely-spaced tread blocks with a tread pattern that has more in common with a sport-touring tire than a knobby, and the tire compound(s) favor on-road grip and longevity. Most 90/10 tires work great on the street or well-graded dirt roads, but you’ll want to avoid sand or mud.

But in the case of an aggressive dual-sport bike like my 2017 KTM 690 Enduro R, its OE tires were 10/90 knobbies with small, widely spaced tread blocks. (Unable to bear parting with the 690-R at the end of our long-term test, I bought it from KTM.) They hummed and squirmed on the street, but were fantastic off-road. The biggest downside of 10/90 tires is that they don’t last long–the rear was shagged after 1,600 miles, and the front tread blocks had become wedge-shaped due to aggressive braking on pavement.

Needing fresh buns for the KTM, I opted for the middle ground. About two-thirds of my miles are devoted to commuting or just getting to/from off-road riding areas, so tires with a slight on-road bias should be quieter, provide more grip on the street and last longer than the 10/90 knobbies.

Shinko’s 700 Series tires have a 60/40 on-/off-road ratio and a heavy-duty four-ply carcass. The tread is made up of irregularly shaped blocks arranged in an interlocking pattern, with larger tread blocks in the center of the tire, smaller blocks on the shoulder and half-depth reinforcements connecting the blocks on the shoulder for cornering stability.

At freeway speeds, the Shinko 700s are quiet and smooth, and on dry and wet twisty roads they lay down a well-planted footprint with minimal squirm. Off-road they perform admirably, scrambling over rough, rocky terrain, dirt tracking around corners and slicing lines through muddy sections with confidence. 

With nearly 600 miles on the Shinko 700s, they’re well scrubbed-in but show little wear. It’s too early to tell how many miles I’ll get out of them, but other Shinko dual-sport tires we’ve tested have lasted at least as long as major competing tires.

One of the most attractive features of Shinko tires is their price: 700s retail for $61.95 for the front (one size: 3.00-21) and $73.95-$85.95 for rears (four sizes: 4.60-17, 5.10-17, 4.60-18, 130/80-18). With a load index of 51 (430 pounds) for the front and 62-67 (584-677 pounds) for the rears, Shinko 700 Series tires are suitable for heavy adventure bikes as well as lighter dual-sports. 

For more information, see your dealer or visit shinkotireusa.com.

Source: RiderMagazine.com

Touring tires on large bikes undergo a torture test every summer. Weighing 900 pounds or more fully loaded, these behemoths of the two-wheeled world place a huge demand on tires, which also have to provide long life, excellent traction and grip–even in the rain–at an affordable price. For a recent cross-country trip from Southern California to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and back, I decided to give Michelin Scorcher 31 tires a try on my Road Glide Ultra. Recently approved for use with the Harley-Davidson Electra Glide, Road Glide and Street Glide, the 31s are also the original equipment tire for almost all of the Sportster and Dyna models and made for the Harley brand with small “Bar and Shield” emblems molded into the sidewalls.

Road conditions varied significantly from state to state on this cross-country ride, from horrible to smooth as glass. The Scorchers handled it all with aplomb. Bumps and potholes were dealt with smoothly with little directional deviation, in part thanks to Michelin’s Amplified Density Technology (ADT), which gives them a stiffer carcass. In curves up to and exceeding floorboard contact with the road, they always maintained a steady lean angle, which was particularly noteworthy during spirited riding on California mountain back roads. There were even a few sections of unanticipated dirt road in New Hampshire (thanks GPS) on which the tires felt well planted and stable, with little loss of traction even under (intentional) hard acceleration. There was naturally some slippage but they were predictable and didn’t kick out to the side.

Riding two-up the Scorchers were comfortable and handled freeway rain grooves with just a little wiggle, although on severe grooving such as the Mackinac Bridge metal gratings, they did wander a little bit. Again, nothing alarming, but enough to let you know you had better pay attention. Temporary patches in the roadways, also known as “tar snakes,” resulted in a little bit of a squirm but nothing unnerving, and on rough freeway roads throughout the New York area my Road Glide kept its solid footing when dodging large potholes. On the back roads of Michigan, which are treated quite roughly with snowplows, the Scorchers did not seem to be adversely influenced by grooves in the roadways. They remained well planted and responded well to input.

Overall, the Michelin Scorcher 31 tires are a nice upgrade from the stock tires on touring bikes. Michelin put quite a bit of R&D into these tires and it shows. Depending on size, prices range from $187 to $347. 

For more information, see your dealer or visit motorcycle.michelinman.com.

Source: RiderMagazine.com