Sport Touring Corner

By Norm Kern

Riders who don’t do multi-day trips miss out on a lot of fun, But there is one stressful thing they don’t have to pay much attention to or think about- tire wear. You check your tire after each day’s ride and if you’re down to the wear bars, you replace it. Simple! (There are those who go past the wear bars but if you’re only an hour’s ride from home, not a big deal- you can always get home, buy a new tire and get it mounted at your leisure.) 

If you do multi-day trips and go hundreds of miles from home, it’s a completely different story. Here is a very typical example of how easy it is to have your trip ruined by not paying enough attention to your tires.

Since this is the age of smart phones, he started calling motorcycle shops. The best bet for his Honda ST1300 tire turned out to be the Honda shop in Marietta, about a mile from the hotel. They could order the tire for him and UPS would deliver it about eleven AM on Friday. He decided to get a new front tire as well, and they ordered both. 

At my FlyBy Week rally in Marietta, Ohio a few years ago, a friend arrived on Wednesday evening so he could make the rally a four-day weekend. On Thursday, we did a route to Hillbilly Hotdogs, about one hundred and fifty miles from Marietta. At Hillbilly Hotdogs, he discovered cord showing on his rear tire.

Friday morning, he goes to the Honda shop. UPS came as promised, but they only brought one tire- the front. The rear didn’t come until Saturday, so he lost two days of riding. Sunday was the ride home, so the tire problem basically shot the whole weekend. Of course, he paid top dollar for the tires, mounting and balancing that he could have done himself for half the cost at home. Tire problems are not only inconvenient- they are expensive too.

I’m not gloating over other people’s tire wear problems. Even though I am careful, I’ve been caught out several times- never with cord showing, but with unexpected rapid wear telling me that I wasn’t going to get home without either taking it very easy or buying a tire that will probably be difficult/impossible to get in a reasonable length of time. 

I bought a digital depth gauge and began measuring the tread depth after every trip. I kept track of measurements in a spreadsheet, entering tread depth and odometer readings. The spreadsheet calculates wear in thousandths of an inch per thousand miles for both front and rear tires. Other info includes my pace and where I went. I’ve learned how to quantify the differences in pavement texture, road style and riding style at various rallies and locales. I could simply tell you what works for me, but you ride a different bike, in a different style, in different places, with different tires. Here’s a summary: For my rear tire, the minimum wear is a little less than 0.030″ per 1k miles. That’s an easy pace on smooth asphalt. Recently I did a week of very fast paced riding on twisty mountain roads in North Carolina some of which was abrasive tar and chip pavement. The wear rate was over 0.80″ per 1k miles- almost three times the minimum rate! If you don’t pay close attention, it’s just a matter of time until you are looking at a big stripe of cord on your tire when you are a long way from home. You need to know what works for you. 

I’m always amazed at how frequently tire wear is a problem for those who attend sport touring rallies. I can walk around in the parking lot on Friday and Saturday nights at any rally and see yet another person face the tire cord trauma. Someone in the crowd will always make light of it by suggesting that the tire could somehow be taped up and get the person home.

Fellow rally rat Harry Dill and I heard this tale of woe so often that we came up with an in-joke about it- a fictional product we call “Tire Tape.” 2606 P05.jpg It would be the same dimensions and come in the same size rolls as duct tape, but would be black. The tag line for the product is, “When the cord starts showin’, Tire Tape keeps you goin’.” Harry will pick up on any joke line and run with it, so we came up with a routine. Whenever we encountered someone with tire cord showing, we started talking to each other about Tire Tape. As ridiculous as this was, it’s amazing how much people want to believe such a product exists. He would ask me if I brought a roll with me. (I now carry a roll of black gaffer tape with Tire-Tape labels on the inside core- always gets a good laugh.) When people ask where to buy it, we tell them it’s available at any Harbor Freight Tool store. “It’s on the shelf in the motorcycle department, right next to the $19.95 Honda VFR regulator-rectifiers.” 

Harry comes up with all kinds of BS on the fly. For example “Tire Tape is now available in a number of varieties that come printed with popular motorcycle tread patterns so it looks great on your tire.” “Now they’ve even got a special Tire Tape with adhesive on both sides so it’s extra sticky for track days. The only thing is you have to be careful about going over dirt or grass- it can take several laps to get the dirt and gravel off the Tire Tape!.”