09-29-2013, 11:45 PM
(09-29-2013, 12:11 PM)The ferret_imp Wrote: The Pirelli Sport Demons are a bias ply tire are they not? Our bike calls for radials. Not sure what the difference is or if that would make it handle funny. According to what Ive read Honda spent a lot of time and research matching these particular tires to this bike.
I must admit though other than this bike and my Nighthawk 750 which also took a weird sized tire, I have basically only used Michelins on all my motorcycles, cars and trucks for the last 20 years. Wish Michelin made tires in the right sizes for this bike.
This info matches a recent article I read in one of the moto-journals about how bike and tire manufacturers work closely with each other to get the best possible results from both products. They conduct joint testing, and bike and tire components are "tuned" until they have the right combination on both sides.
Even more interesting: tire makers will build "special editions" of tires that are specifically for a certain bike. You might go and buy the same make, model, and size of a tire at Cycle Gear as what came with your bike, but there are other indicators such as a product code stamped on the tire that indicate that it was made for a specific bike/vehicle.
Personally I'm not fanatical enough about it (or rich enough to spend the money) to go buy OEM tires at the Honda dealer. Selecting one of the two options presented in the Owner's Manual from an online vendor or Cycle Gear is close enough for my purposes.
However, I would never install a bias-ply tire on a bike designed to use radials, or vice-versa. Nor would I install different tire sizes, even if they seemed to fit. I like my skin too much to risk even a small chance of scraping it off with asphalt.
Honda spent a lot of time and effort designing and creating specifications for my bike, and I really doubt I, or some guy in a local shop, can do a better job of it than they did.