New tires over the weekend for me. I was getting annoyed with the weird “fall in“ feeling the bike was doing with it’s half worn Rosso III tires and wanted to restore that smooth side to side transition so I No-Mar’ed on a set of Pilot Power 5’s (not the Roads). I pretty much use this bike as my twisty road fun bike so I thought I’d go grip over longevity and wanted to switch it up a bit and try something else to see how the bike feels.
I’m waiting on the “new” Ducati sized cones to balance the rear but I ran it up the road a bit and it feels great again; very smooth, very predictable, very easy to turn in, just like I remember the bike being when new. None of that quick fall in and try to stand up once leaned over when cornering I had been feeling this season.
Looking at the old tires that have around 3.000 miles on them, I can see lots of cupping in the front (kinda normal for me), especially on the left right (edited) side (not super normal) but it still has its “triangular“ V shape where the rear is wearing very evenly side to side but is a much more round U shape. Note I usually run 36/36 but started running 34/36 this year in an effort to get more feel out of the front.
I think that’s where the odd feeling some people have reported comes in as they wear; I’d guess if you do enough highway riding you will wear the center of the front down to the point it mimics the wear on the rear and it stays even between the two, doesn’t wear to two different shapes like mine did (V shape front, U shape rear profile). I pretty much only take this bike if there’s going to be corners (probably 2,000 of the 3,000 miles are in the smoky mountains) and like to accelerate out of corners so I’m either on the sides of the tires or heavy on the rear accelerating using the torque the bike has. My theory at least.
The Powers are a U shape profile so we’ll see how they do as time moves forward. Still hoping for a trip in October to the Smoky’s so we’ll see how they do.
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