tyres

[timwilky]

Not the usual .org questions. cos we already know what the racers found out this weekend

1) they last nowhere near long enough

2) they won't go round corners in the wet.



OK obvious really. But if considering your avarage cage driver gets say 5 times the life out of tyre, and far better road holdingand pays half the cost per tyre. When are we who buck/mile pay far more far our tyres going to see real benifit from the Pirrelli/Michellin money spent in racing.

At present I see little evidence that the professional riders are getting anything so I guess we as the end customer are going to continue paying for the foreseeable with the promise of jam tomorrow.

[Stingo]

It is one of my beliefs that the tyre manufacturers are in cahoots with the people that construct roads - they each cleverly b*gger the other one up enough to keep each in business in production and rip the punter off big time!!

i was saying something similar today on about speed humps, it wouldnt surprise me if suspension makers sponsor the council to install as many as poss! its a bl@@dy nightmare round here now!

[northwind]

Originally Posted by timwilky

When are we who buck/mile pay far more far our tyres going to see real benifit from the Pirrelli/Michellin money spent in racing.

At present I see little evidence that the professional riders are getting anything so I guess we as the end customer are going to continue paying for the foreseeable with the promise of jam tomorrow.

Race rubber getting better isn't going to make street rubber any better, IMO, any more than carbon and ceramic brake discs are about to appear on next year's Fireblade.... Different routes of development. The carcasses, compounds, and fields of operation are completely different.

But hang on, do you think that today's tyres aren't worlds better than they were a decade ago? In terms of road tyres, we have ones that'll last 10,000 miles to the rear yet still be better than the sportiest road rubber then. In fact, we have sporty road rubber that's comparable to race tyres not so long ago. Even in the time I've been riding we've had the Roadtec, Strada and Road Attack come along and basically turn the game on its head, which offer great performance while outlasting many of the touring tyres.

The reason car owners get 5 times more miles, and better road holding, is contact patches. They have 4 tyres, each of which has a contact patch which is, IIRC, typically twice as big as both of ours put together, and it doesn't change when cornering. So you have a bigger gripping surface, that has to work far less hard. Bike tyres need to be massively better to do the same job. Luckily, they are.