Quote:
Originally Posted by Easy Rider  Yes. It is a fact.
Just exactly what the hell ELSE do you think accounts for the difference in wear.......from 7,500 miles to 80,000 ??
None are so blind as those who WILL not see.
The end. |
Easy Rider,
Your are 100% right about there being a difference in rubber compounds. To prove it I researched the Bridgestone Battlax BT020 rear tire that came stock on my Vulcan 2000. It has a durometer rating of 65, which appears to be about medium/low hardness for street motorcycle tires. The Dunlop SP5000 symmetrical car tire I researched has a durometer reading of 50. So the fact is that in my case, my motorcycle tire has a 30% harder rubber compound than my car tire. To me this is a fairly substantial difference. Looking around on the net I've found that this difference is pretty typical when comparing durometer readings between most street motorcycle tires and most high performance street car tires.
So the fact is that the typical street motorcycle tire is made with a substantially harder rubber compound than the typical high performance car tire.
The reason motorcycle tires wear so relatively fast is simple, but it is not caused by having softer rubber. Motorcycles in general have a much higher power to weight ratio than cars. All of this power, along with breaking force, is transferred to the road on a much smaller contact area relative to a car tire. Even though a car loads its tires with higher weight loads than a motorcycle does, the load is spread over a much larger contact patch resulting in less pressure on the contact patch. If the rubber on a motorcycle tire was as soft as the car tire in my example it probably wouldn't last a thousand miles.
Take Care, VulcanV2K