Fitted and ready to go on Saturday
Looks like they'll see some snow use too
I'll report back on them in 4 weeks time............................
Andres
6,000 miles and the tyres have seen lots of snow, M-ways, twisty mountain roads, graded Piste, rocky Piste and sand
To give perspective on my views bear in mind that I normally use dirt bikes for riding off road and my GS is treated as a pure road bike. As such she normally runs pure road rubber (not off road looking tyres such as Tourances etc). Any comments about handling are relative to what I'm used to on my GS and are not necessarily a slight on the K60's which, overall, I thought were excellent
The bike was fully loaded and one up. Throughout I ran 42/36 psi.
I reckon about half of the mileage was on M-ways at anywhere between 60 and 95mph.
A bit vibey/noisey when in single figure mph but once above that smooths out fine. There also seemed a minor vibey patch at around 65ish.
Felt perfectly fine stability wise up to three figures but started feeling a bit vague on bends at that speed - the down hill section of M-way after the Milau bridge and before Perpignan is one of my fav bits of road. I'd normally fly down that at quite silly speeds but on the K60's 90-100 felt as fast as I wanted to go - given the type of tyre though, I was impressed
Normal riding on tarmac, no issues what so ever, wet grip particuarly impressed
Snow
Saw plenty of this on the trip. They actually worked as well as a knobblie would on fresh, crunchy snow which was nice. On compacted, frozen snow they were as bum clenching as any other tyre....................
One of the quicker Calum's Rd crew and I went on a blast on the mountain roads up to Ronda in S Spain, he was on Tourances. Nothing in it, we were both as quick as each other and the K60's performed well - you could feel the blocks move which was disconcerting but, once used to, no problem.
On a couple of occasions I threw the bike on it's ear trying to induce a slide - that was actually a bit scarey, you really could feel the bike move on the edge blocks but it felt so vague that there was no feedback as to when the bike was gonna start slidding so I didn't try that again. Having said that, it didn't slide.................just felt that when it eventualy did it would do so with no warning.
Pistes, graded or not, exceptional
To say that they had to cope with 1/4 tonne of bike they held the plot together superbly, working really well at speed on the dirt. They really inspired confidence
Sand - see below
they worked as well as any tyre would trying to keep control of a GS on sand
They are now horribly squared off (and now white line like feck) but I reckon have a good 2000 miles left - they wont be staying on though, I miss my road tyres
I've ridden other peeps GS's with TKC's and I reckon therte is little to choose between them off road but on road the K60's are far better, longer lasting and cheaper.
If I do a similar trip again I'll be running K60's
Andres
