Darkside/downside

[muleskinner]

Hey I'm not trying to persuade anyone to not use a car tire. I put the article info up for those that do who might want to read the info. Do as you wish. It's your bike, life, limb, liability, not mine. I could care less!

 

[GPMAZ]

I currently have a Bridgestone tyre on my bike before that I had a car tyre and the first thing that I did was call my local Gieco Insurance agent and ran it by him what I wanted to do, he called me back the next day and said that it would not be a problem with the insurance if I had a car tyre on it.

Without wanting to get in the middle of this discussion (I learned my lesson the hard way), unless you have that assurance from your agent in writing its worthless. What will be covered and what won't be covered is up to the adjuster, not the agent.

With the practice of running car tires on motorcycles getting more and more exposure it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see insurance companies deny coverage at some point. After all, they make money denying claims, not approving them.

 

[xhdskip]

You've probably got a point Harry,
they make money denying claims
or receiving payments from folks
who never file a claim.
as for myself, I'm far less likely to file a claim because of an accident
riding on my car tire than on the metz.
Which as most of us know and found out the hard way,
as metz which will lock up relatively easily.


Appreciate the link too Muleskinner,
didn't mean to sound like I was coming down on you for posting it.

 

[sandman1852]

Ok I wasn't going to comment but ,I ran the darkside recently out of curiosity for about 1200 miles,this is what I determined my OWN opinion.it rode great,it stopped even better,great in the rain ( big rooster tails) no real down side ,more counter steer ,a little clumsy at parade speed.would I do it again? Sure it's not as bad as a lot of the naysayers say, I prefer the new bridgestones I just put on there great. It cost me 150 bucks to find out if I liked it not,anyway just my 2 cents.........sandman

 

[CanberraR3]

I read the article. It seems quite balanced and objective. I guess that's because I'm not a zealot when it comes to tyres, but someone looking for information on the subject. I can understand why darksiders don't like it - for the reasons stated in the article - but I wonder what the reaction would be if the same article included comments from the same people but instead of concluding dark siding is flawed, said it was a great option. 10c says these so called self serving "experts" would suddenly be seen as experts..........

 

[CanberraR3]

By the way, the article mentioned that some people are even putting car tyres on the front of their bikes. Anyone heard or, know of or tried this? I'm not talking about the old style bike tyres like these:

 

[Kmutt]

Its very simple really.........if car tires are accepted then most of the tire manufacturers who make bike tires would stop cause nobody would buy them.......
So that begs the question as to why bike tires are so much more expensive? I get that the production runs are smaller so cost would be a little higher but not by hundreds of dollars!
Also why cant they make a bike tire that lasts 40000 miles like car tires? Not every bike is a performace behemoth.....(i.e. harley's )

My take is that this is a large enough industry to extract lots of money in a short period of time........I do not believe that it costs that much more to produce (being a manufacturing engineer I try to keep up with how things are made in all industires).

Endorsing car tires on bikes would essentially kill an industry......Now theres my .02
And that much closer to 1000 posts! Nooooooooo!!!!

mutt

 

[Evil Mitch]

You've probably got a point Harry,
they make money denying claims
or receiving payments from folks
who never file a claim.
as for myself, I'm far less likely to file a claim because of an accident
riding on my car tire than on the metz.
Which as most of us know and found out the hard way,
as metz which will lock up relatively easily.


Appreciate the link too Muleskinner,
didn't mean to sound like I was coming down on you for posting it.

I never found the metz to have any safety issues my self just didnt last long is all
but then again i never grab the rear brake all that hard anyway

 

[mexican]

Kmutt, right at 1000 posts you need to buy us all a beer

 

[CanberraR3]

You'd be wrong to assume that the full width of the car tyre is contacting the road. More often than not it's less than 1/2 and well off to one side or the other. This is not my opinion but what I have observed. Unless you're on a dead flat road with no crown or camber, you're generally leaning to counter the flat profile so grabbing a heap of rear brake in most situtations with a car tyre would give you an unnatural dynamic. More grip perhaps but most likely nowhere near the centre of the tyre plus the bike's leaning before you even start. I've seen this. I've ridden behind a number of darksiders and all have had to lean their bikes to run down a straight stretch of road. To my mind this looks strange and even uncomfortable (and surely makes onlookers wonder what's wrong with bike). Contact patch changes continuously from about an inch on the corner to around 4-6 inches, but is very rarely the full width unless the road is dead flat.