Car tyre on a bike

[DarrenSV650S]

:driving:

http://lifeisaroad.com/stories/2004/10/27/theDarkSide.html

[ethariel]

cool!

[davepreston]

that was defo worth the read

[TamSV]

That's a good un. I would have said that was a definite no no but he makes sense.

So...anyone off to get a Pirelli P6 in the morning? :p

[thefallenangel]

don't think our tyres on the SV come in a car size do they?

[TamSV]

You might get front drag skinnies on at a push. US drag racers run these on 17x4.5 wheels. Probably best not to go out in the rain though. :)

http://www.mandhtires.com/store.php?crn=70&rn=372&action=show_detail

I'm not considering this by the way :p

[cb1000rsteve]

Be alright in america where motorways r straight but while the A1 has knee down bends in it i think its best to stick to a motorcycle tyre here

[yorkie_chris]

Er yeah. If I fancied running some lard-*rse cruiser with no ground clearance up and down the M6 for fun then MAYBE he'd have a point.

[yorkie_chris]

for the experienced rider

Translation:
"It handles like sh*t."

the cruiser tires perform about the same as they did when I started riding.BS

My point here is that motorcycle tires for my street bike are 25-year old technologyBS

Also note, several machines already have used car-tires, including several early models of V-8 bikes and quite a few custom jobs. I am not alone out here.Oh, lots of other crap that doesn't go around corners... Surprise, surprise.



So in conclusion. You can't make a big agricultural cruiser handle any worse than what it does already. It still won't have any damping, ground clearance or power to test the grip of whatever vaguely round thing you can shoe-horn onto its rims. So fit what you want.


edit:
one more for luck

In the first 16,000 miles I had shredded 5 different motorcycle tires off the back of this machine...FIVE times I had to get this machine to a stop from high speed with a flat, shredded, or unseated tire and limited handling capability.

You're doing it wrong.

[orose]

Interesting to see that the valkrie in question (which nicked the goldwing engine) is also available in a touring version...

[dill89]

You're doing it wrong.

Amen!!

[warrenhewitt10]

the handling of that must be.....interesting

[hongman]

Why not fit a steering wheel to it as well, so it turns better!

[tom-k6]

why not add another wheel and use 2 car tyres and call it a trike??

[tom-k6]

i always knew, always, that they didnt really leave england in search for new lands, we kicked them out for being bloody stupid.

[Berlin]

Didn't they make a car tyre especially for a Mercedes that had tilting wheels? They had a rounded edge and would suit him perfectly.

I'm not going to kock him because he's obviously happy with it and its his bike his life and his experience.

C

[andreis]

Actually, all car tyres have rounded edges and look more like a rounded U rather than a sharp |_| and this is to account for tyre deformation when subjected to side forces (such as the ones that occur when hard rounding curves)...
Of course, mounting one would surely make a bike handle like cr*p as it has a more abrupt transition, whereas the motorbike tyre has a circled profile and thus there is no actual transition to talk of (except on badly worn motorbike tyres..)

Whilst I don't agree to mounting a car tyre on a bike, I do get his point about manufacturers not willing to make tyres that last on motorbikes, as there isn't a sufficiently large market to account for development costs. So they NEED to last a short amount of time, so that we keep buying more tyres than a car owner to compensate for the lack of large numbers...

[Owenski]

that was defo worth the read

+1000
Be a shame to put off by the length of it, some good insite.
Totally inapplicable to the UK but still a good read.

[arenalife]

An insight into how differently we use the roads can be seen in his description of tyre life, he said his last car tyres lasted 70,000 miles!! It's usually about 12 - 15k over here. American car tyres must be hard as nails. No wonder they're mentally unprepared for bike tyre life.

[warrenhewitt10]

maybe its not the american cars that have terrible handling then.............its just the tyres they are using

[warrenhewitt10]

with longer tyre life comes less grip, and on something that has only got 2 wheels lots of grip is kinda nessesary, so id rather not dump the bike and pay for new tyres slightly more often imo

[mister c]

Mate of mine had car tyres on his GS850 Combo. Leading link front sussies & little tyres, looked quite cool :)

[dill89]

An insight into how differently we use the roads can be seen in his description of tyre life, he said his last car tyres lasted 70,000 miles!! It's usually about 12 - 15k over here. American car tyres must be hard as nails. No wonder they're mentally unprepared for bike tyre life.

probably made of the world's finest, hardest plastic, hence why they don't have any bends over there...

i'll stick to the normal motorbike tyres thank you very much

[yorkie_chris]

I do get his point about manufacturers not willing to make tyres that last on motorbikes, as there isn't a sufficiently large market to account for development costs. So they NEED to last a short amount of time, so that we keep buying more tyres than a car owner to compensate for the lack of large numbers...

I disagree with that.
They have a completely different job. You want to try making a tyre having same coefficient of friction as ours with the size of the contact patch?

Car tyres can be basically made of plastic and work fine.

[andreis]

I disagree with that.
They have a completely different job. You want to try making a tyre having same coefficient of friction as ours with the size of the contact patch?

Car tyres can be basically made of plastic and work fine.

I am in no position to say anything about the technology that goes into designing a good compound/design for bike tyres and it's obvious that they do try on the research of the compound itself (seeing as the friction coeff of bike tyres is generally higher than that of cars).

But about production technology, I'm not so sure, seeing as a brand new bike tyre requires so much weight to balance properly. I'm pretty sure they're skimping on costs somewhere and this was obvious to me when I was in the market for a new back tyre and read about some of the highly acclaimed ones. Every thread on tyre selection was riddled with people having trouble with the inconsistency of them. I seem to recall even Rossi making a comment about the tyres of a major manufacturer regarding inconsistence of quality (although he was praising the advancements made in friction coeff and such). Now, if you've got bad tyres at that level, than what are we to expect?

Okay, it's a given that perhaps when dabbling with the limits of physics you're gonna get some problems, but it does not exempt them from criticism.

Now, luckily, the tyre I have on the back now (Michelin PR 2) has not given me any problems, but it did require a lot of weight to balance and I felt I was a bit lucky that that was all that was required.

I just don't think that me feeling lucky to get a good one is the way to go for a manufacturer to earn trust.. I should be feeling extremely unlucky to get a bad one ;)

[andreis]

Oh, and I don't understand what the size of the contact patch has to do with anything other than wear (of course, size of contact patch related to weight of vehicle gives better or worse wear).. Is there something I'm missing?

[yorkie_chris]

A car tyre has a huge contact patch in comparison to a bike, so for similar grip, the compound can be more hard wearing.

[andreis]

Agreed :)

[yorkie_chris]

That is most of that guys argument.

Because he has a fat cruiser with no ground clearance or power, he does not need a tyre with 50 degrees of possible lean in it and high friction coefficient at edge. So for his use a car tyre is actually more optimised. He uses same lean as a car has body roll.

Like anything, you make one area better but compromise in another. He has a tyre which won't square off, at the expense of cornering capacity (which he could never use).

Still, fact that he was destroying (literally) touring tyres in 3000 miles suggests he was doing something very wrong to those. Especially to have ALL of them fail so catastrophically. Maybe loading them beyond their rating or similar abuse.

[Triv650]

Now someone should put bike tyres on a car :D.

[andreis]

Now someone should put bike tyres on a car :D.

They already did... not conventional cars, but watch :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CAnq5DyNG0 :)

[xXBADGERXx]

Why not fit a steering wheel to it as well, so it turns better!


Aaaah your a star sometimes :p

[Smudge]

MY mate had a V-Max with a car tyre on the back but that was for drag pulling comps.
I recon it would be a good choice for a Hardly Rideable and american roads lol

[xXBADGERXx]

Yeah , would be ok in America and installed on a Hardly Movingson