Tires for sandy, salty, wet, frosty and otherwise nasty roads.....

[tkent02]

I live in Colorado, and my riding season is November through April.
Roads are rarely if ever clean and dry during that time, there is always something laying around from the snowy days. It's usually fairly cold out.
I ride a lot in the Winter, when the weather is good enough. Usually not riding real hard because the roads always suck.


This on a 1980 GS750E, completely stock but for the Superbike bars.

I'm thinking Sport Demons for the maximum possible traction, but maybe something else might work better in these conditions.
Maybe those new Avons?
Something that hooks up again quickly when slipping on sand would be nice.

Any experience here?
Price is no object, nor is getting a lot of miles out of them.

Thanks!

[bwringer]

I'm thinking exactly along the same lines as you -- I've been extremely happy with my Pirelli Sport Demons in the dry, but they've also been great in the wet, cold, ice, salt, sand, etc. in Indiana (we have crappy weather like Colorado, but much less scenery). They also seem a lot less affected by oil, antifreeze, deicing fluid (really) and other automotive crud in the road than past tires. You gotta love 2007 tire technology on antique bikes.

But if anyone knows miserable weather, it's the British, and those new Avon AM26 Roadriders are VERY intriguing.

Plus, they're $60 less for a set from http://swmototires.com than the Pirellis.

Unless someone talks me out of it, I'm going to order up a set of the Avons sometime this summer when my Pirellis wear out. Somebody's gotta do it.

On an only vaguely related note, my other Suzuki shaftie, a 1990 VX800, can use either radial or bias ply tires. Just yesterday, I ordered up a set of Avon's new AV55/AV56 Storm sport radials. Supposedly, they offer up excellent wet grip and extended mileage along with great handling and all that. I might be all-Avon in a few months...

[tkent02]

Will those Storm Sports fit a 1980 GS 750??

I'm thinking I will never reach the lean angles that the Sport Demons are intended for in the winter around here.
Maybe something else makes more sense.
And yes, the Brits know a bit about rain riding, I live in Scotland in the summertime, it gets wet there.
Hmmm, pondering.

[bwringer]

The new AM26 Roadrider has a pretty wide range of sizes available -- you should be able to fit your bike. (The AV55/56 Storm is the new radial, not available in sizes for vintage bikes.)

FWIW, my last few sets of tires were Dunlop 491, Dunlop 404 (%$#@! POS evaporated in 3K miles ), and three sets of Cheng Shin HiMax before that. And Bridgestones before that, and Metzelers, and I think there were some Contis in there somewhere, and a set of Kendas on my old Kawasaki...

Well, anyway, leaving aside the many other differences, the Pirelli Sport Demons stick far better in cold and freezing weather than any of the others.

Below 40 degrees (F), every other tire I've tried gets noticeably stiffer, and the rubber itself also seems to freeze up, get stiff, and lose its ability to interface with the road. If you stick your fingernail in the rubber, it's hard to make a dent.

The Pirellis, being a much more up to date design and compound, fare much better in the cold. They remain flexible and grip confidently in weather well below freezing. If I go through a patch of gravel in the parking lot at work, the Pirellis pick up some of the sand and small pieces of gravel. The other tires never did this in cold weather -- the rubber was stiff, not sticky.

I've also noticed that the modern radials now on my VX (Bridgestone BT-020) also remain nice and flexible in the cold.

Basically, the Pirellis and a few other sport bias tires (Avon AM26, Bridgestone BT-45 and Michelin Macadam) use modern tread compounds and carcass design applied to sizes to fit old crocks. One side effect of modern compounds is that they don't get hard and slipppery in cold weather.

[Mike_H]

You may want to see what is available for dual sport bikes. They will have a much more open tread pattern to displace water and crud than a standard, "good" weather bike tire. Just a thought. I have no idea if anything like that is available in the sizes you need.

[bwringer]

If you're riding in REALLY sloppy conditions, you might look at Kenda 761 Dual-Sport tires. I thought very seriously this winter about outfitting my GS850G with a set of these. And I might still do this next fall, if I can scare up the $150 or so (Dennis Kirk prices -- prolly cheaper elsewhere) for a set of these and tubes. I've got an extra set of wheels, so I could swap them in as needed.

The word on these tires from the adventure rider folks (KLR/DR650, BMW GS, etc.) is excellent. And they're cheap.

http://www.americanmototire.com/index.html?lang=en-us&target=d206.html

I think they're available from other vendors in a few other sizes as well. 100/90-19 and 120/90-17 would work on a GS850G, but I don't know what your bike uses.