#tires

Are high-end sport-touring tires sticky enough for everyday canyon carving and an occasional trackday, or is it smarter to trade tire life for ultimate grip with race-bred street rubber?

If you’re like me, you love ripping around at trackdays, going as fast as you want without the fear of cops or opposing traffic waiting to ruin your day. That feeling you get when you know your tires are nice and hot and can do no wrong is simply magical and adds to the allure of motorcycling you simply can’t explain to your non-riding buddies. But if you’re also like me, then you’re lazy and too much of a cheapskate to bother buying tire warmers and a generator to operate them. So what’s one to do if excellent grip is the goal, but putting those pigs in a blanket just ain’t gonna happen?

Race bikes evolve constantly, so the tire manufacturers must race to catch up. Race tires evolve further, passing the race bikes, but eventually allow them to catch up and get back on track. And this motorcycle of life, goes around and around and around, like a dropped forged wheel.

Have a father? Plan on celebrating Father’s Day? Well, it’s time to get to gift giving. You’ve been searching for that perfect gift for the guy who’s spent your entire life being your dad, but you can’t decide what to get. Is your dad a motorcyclist? If so, things just got easier. Not only because buying any biker motorcycle-related stuff will be an instant win, but also because MO put together a super rad Father’s Day Buyer’s Guide with gifts guaranteed to win you the coveted favorite child award. Rest assured, when your pops tears the wrapping off of one of these bad boys, he’ll forget all about that other child and his lame robin’s egg blue tie.

Since my conversion five years ago to dual-sport from pure dirt bikes, with the purchase of my 2013 KTM EXC 500, the question of tires has been an ongoing experiment. My tire requirement list covers a wide range of needs. My favorite riding spot is about 25 miles from the garage including a quick freeway trip, a country road, then a winding paved climb where I practice my supermoto skills. From there, the dirt is your typical California mountain fare: super loose silt, baby-head sized rocks, roots and everything in between. The goal has always been to find a tire that can endure the pavement abuse, corner like a street bike and then inspire that rare confidence in the dirt – hooking up like we actually have had some moisture in the last six months – while lasting a good long while.

It’s fair to say most, if not all, of us prefer riding over wrenching, but as much as our beloved motorcycles provide us with happy memories and roadside therapy, these machines also need a little loving. Basic maintenance isn’t difficult, but it does require periodic attention. Adhere to the manufacturer’s suggested maintenance intervals and your machine will provide you with miles upon miles of trouble free riding. The best part is that most of the things we suggest below don’t require special tools! Curious what you should be on top of when it comes to motorcycle maintenance? Then keep on reading.

It was rough duty but somebody had to do it: Hang out at Laguna Seca’s World Superbike/MotoAmerica race all weekend so as to be there early Monday to ride around on Pirelli’s new supersporty street tire, the Diablo Rosso Corsa II. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, since Pirelli has been the official tire of the WSBK since 2004 and will continue to be through at least 2020.

Building a new motorcycle tire is not easy. As the only two contact points your motorcycle has to the ground, there’s a lot of responsibility involved. In the case of a racing tire, the demands become that much greater; not only does the tire need to remain consistent throughout its life, but it also needs to be better than its predecessor. Sure, this can be said about practically any motorcycle tire, but with racing tires there’s an actual gauge to measure old and new: the stopwatch.

When we consider sport-touring motorcycle tires, we typically envision clipping an endless series of apexes as we take a day’s ride (or two) through scenic countryside – perhaps with some soft luggage and a passenger on the back. Well, sport-touring tires have morphed over the years into something of a jack-of-all-trades tire made for the active motorcyclist who uses their bike every day. The sport-touring tire’s job description now includes frequent commuter duty plus the weekend fun runs to the local twisties in addition to more traditional sport-touring adventures. Michelin says the new Road 5 tire is up for the challenge.

Dear MOby,

Today, Michelin announced a new sport-touring tire, the Michelin Road 5. Although the Road 5 supersedes the Pilot Road 4, the Pilot has been dropped from the name in an effort to differentiate Michelin’s road-going offerings from the more hard-core sporting Power line. The primary change between the Pilot Road 4 and the Road 5 takes place in the tread’s siping and the incorporation of ACT+ technology seen earlier this year on the Michelin Power RS.

Dear MOby,

Dear MOby,

Yo, I made a video! Actually Matt Francis made the video while I walked around with a microphone and interrupted people, since I was already in Texas for the introduction of Dunlop’s new Q3+ Sportmax tire anyway. The MO wheel grinds slow but fine; this took place in April, before the MotoAmerica race season even got started. But I guess you could already sort of tell how things were going to go – much the way they’ve been going since Monster Yamaha and Yoshimura Suzuki became the only serious factory teams. Still fun to watch.

Anyone who has witnessed a washing machine walking its way across the basement floor can understand how important balancing the load on rotating objects can be. Some people mistakenly think that, because modern wheels have gotten so much lighter and better balanced, they don’t need to balance wheels when fresh tires are installed. This is wrong. Even the smallest difference in weight is amplified many, many times as the wheel rotates. Also, your tires will wear more evenly and your bike will be more stable with balanced tires.