Earlier this summer, the bike got some new shoes. Some Bridgestone BT010’s to be exact. From what I’ve read about these tires, they are supposed to feel very light and responsive yet will stay glued in under high speed turns, as well as having a long tread life. However, I really wasn’t initially impressed with the first rear tire I had…
I couldn’t ever get a good impression of the tires. There was something that just felt strange about the rear– almost like the contact patch was very slim. I could feel the rear sliding out on turns that my Dunlop D207’s would have no problem with, so my confidence level was not all that high. Visually they didn’t look right to me either– they looked much more skinny and in much more of a dome shape rather than a steady curve across the surface.
Last weekend, I came home to find a nail in the rear tire. Unfortunately it was after 3 PM on a Saturday, which pretty much means unless I want to pay dealer price for tires, its staying where its at.
On Thursday I finally got around to taking it off, and headed down to Discount Motorcycle Tire to get it replaced. It was there that the epiphany occured– this tire was completely the wrong size! The tire which was on the bike was a 160/60, when the correct size is a 185/45. That’s really unbelieveable– retrospectively, its a bit shocking that I never wrecked with that tire. I have no idea how that size of tire would of ended-up on there, so I’m not going to point any fingers.
After getting the tire home, it took me a couple of hours of sledge hammering, f-bomb dropping, and messy work to get the tire back on. Bearings kept falling out while I was mounting the tire (its a pain to lift the tire and put the axle back through it while having to hold the tire), so I had to redo the mounting 3 times. Now that I’ve done it several times, I could do it again in 10 minutes.
Now that I have the correct size tire on, I’ll write a review of them once they are scrubbed in and have some canyon carving miles on them.
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