Hellfire held off trying the Darkside asking all the usal questions till Nolton found the BF Goodrich which had nicly rounded edges and reported a good feel to it, like most of us because like you he and others myself included came from sports bike riding style backgrounds, I was fortunate enought to meet a darksider not long after buying my then new rocket and having already gone of the edge of the tread and marked the sidewall of the Metz with a couple of nasty slides up in the hills near home, anyway this guy said I should try a DS and I laughted at him and said I like to get serious in the corners, so we went for a ride and he stuck with me which is generally a bit unusual so I followed him the next time out and was amazed at how much of the tyre stayed in contact as the speed increases, if you follow a DS at low speed it appears to lift up on to it's edge, this an illusion or the rider is tuning to much air. Forget it a darkside needs to be run softer. I am now using a federal 595 which has a wear rating of only 260 ( the lower the rating the better the grip) this tyre I run at a max of 30psi it does not go on to the sidewall at all no matter how hard I'm scraping the pegs.
Now in contrast the first DS I used was a Toyo which at even 33psi was going over on to the sidewall even though it was not loosing grip, in both cases the Toyo and the federal have both been 245's so yeah I like em wide and I weight 110kg a tad over 6 foot tall and have no trouble get the rocket changing direction quickly.
The BF Goodrich is unfortunately not available over here otherwise I would have tried it or the R/ Raptor (also not available here) but the federal has also got Nicely rounded edges and hangs on great even in the wet I was passing sports bikes thru the bends on the way to Phillip Island last week
... Betcha f#ckin Metzler are pleased though ...... Sorry didn't mean to hi-jack your thread.
