Tyres - fwiw

[NicD]

Prob not worth much, but in case of use to anyone

Have had 4 different set on 08 GS this year: Tourance, Road 5 Trails, Anakee Adv, Roadtec 01

Metzelers are head and shoulders above the Michelins. Road 5s good, but not nearly as clear feedback as either set of Metzelers. Anakee Advs - don't, long story, not much use I'm afraid. Roadtec 01s seem the best but still early days on them.

fwiw i have had many sets of metzelers, so am likely biased to how they feel on the GS. Could be that if you are used to Michelins then they will feel much better (but I doubt it - central tread was much softer on both sets of Michelins and there is a good deal of weight on relatively narrow tyres

 

[Tractors are go]

Try the Avon's.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

[botus]

roadtec 01 is a road tyre ? the rest were mostly pretend offroad? if so not much surprise

I had lots of issues with road tyres causing the front end to flex with stantions and bottom yoke not up to the job
added a brace just below the ball joints between the legs (lots of room and works a treat) and found Dunlop road smart felt the most normal (had 1 2 and 3s) Mich PS3 somehow made it do stoppies all the time and made strange noises and Bridgestone were just shocking with so much weight you get 5" of fork flex at the handlebar before the wheel moved.
How they felt the LCs should get super feeble pipe cleaners instead of forks, when the air cooled ones have half the integrity they need I don't know.

 

[timeandtide]

Try the Avon's.

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Sound advice!

 

[Wreford Miles]

Avon trail riders

 

[NicD]

roadtec 01 is a road tyre ? the rest were mostly pretend offroad? if so not much surprise

I had lots of issues with road tyres causing the front end to flex with stantions and bottom yoke not up to the job
added a brace just below the ball joints between the legs (lots of room and works a treat) and found Dunlop road smart felt the most normal (had 1 2 and 3s) Mich PS3 somehow made it do stoppies all the time and made strange noises and Bridgestone were just shocking with so much weight you get 5" of fork flex at the handlebar before the wheel moved.
How they felt the LCs should get super feeble pipe cleaners instead of forks, when the air cooled ones have half the integrity they need I don't know.

Road 5 Trail is a stiffer-sidewall version of Road 5 for adv bikes. 100% road

Anakee Adventure was decent on dry off-road. Utterly useless in mud. Stones/small rocks, dirt and gravel were great. Handling on-road was pretty good - pegs down no worries on hairpins. But vague sensation I had with Road 5s too

Tourance are simply great and price is brilliant. Roadtec 01s are similar in terms of feedback and have a lot of grip. composition of tyre different so with shalllower tread than tourance it may end up doing similar mileage

Avons i don't see the point given how good the metzelers are - why try something else and potenitlaly have to put up with another tyre i don't like as much. I tried the michelins as i know many who love the R5s, and I have Michelins great for my 748 and speed triple - along with pirellis they were spot on road and track on the ducati. But i think the same thing that made them great on the 748 becomes a handicap with the big trail bike on a 150/70.

just my view. posting in case it is useful to anyone else

 

[BillyBoxer6]

I inherited a pair of Mitas on my 07 GSA.
Would never have chosen them but they hold well in Wet and Dry and I'm quite happy with them.
They got a proper Wet Test during a visit to Wales in July too....

 

[ricalnic]

Avon trail riders

+1 great tyres

 

[Wegby]

+1 on the Tourances. My first GS in 2005 came with them fitted and I've replaces with similar since.

Only other experience was with a set of Anakees my current GSA came with; they seemed ok, but the Tourances seem better to me wrt feedback.

 

[botus]

best steering was a Tourance front and Bridgestone road rear, it was so flickable....

the short gearing of the rear I used made acceleration better, and was just enough to mostly remove engine knock (in hot weather under full abuse at 6300rpm) that led to massive lag in throttle response on rare occasions - and of course a performance hit. It's balance of handling and shorter gearing was magic.... but it put a 1000 pretend miles on the clock "running the shorter gearing".

With later tyre sizes for the LC bikes coming out I've gone back to std circumference.... the knock came back and the handling is 20% worse (but I'd started doing longer runs so high speed gearing and correct mileage became more important)...

BMW "cured" the knock issue with a later map (it's been a total disaster for the last 2 years and it got rid of the knock by removing any power anywhere) It was back for another i-level reflash a month ago after I found out you could and "raised a puma case". I put 4 coils on and new iridium plugs so they had less to argue about (and it seemed to help marginally around 4k but felt even slower from 6k onward). The bike got a software update to Aug 2018 (but its the same crappy map as they last revised on early air cooled bikes in 2008), they won't give back the old really fast map it had when sold, even though to this day it still resides in BMW's K24 daten folders ready to go back on. Of course for the puma case I had to wipe the powercomander and reconnect the CAT sensors. I must say that later map doing it the BMW way is light years on for low speed work below 4k. But a total basket case afterwards. It need half the original map and the first half of the new map and we'd be on to something almost special.

Not sure if they played with adaption data but its less bad this round, the massive lag in mid range is limited to a much smaller hole closer to a 500 rpm band around 4400 rpm, rather than 4000 to 5500 chasm and seems to have much more top end power again. Not ridden it much since, for the first few miles the bike was oddly unresponsive but after a good top end ragging when it had fully warmed up somehow it seems to have unlocked much of the old performance it once had. Easily getting back to 120mph in half a mile rather than the fight most bikes have reaching 110mph (as did mine when they first gave me that later rubbish map). But I'd take the old map with its rough recalcitrant joke bottom end (as you can more or less fix that with a powercomander) so I could keep the great power it once had from 3000 to 7800... like it had for the first 10 years of its life