Tires

[veech_imp]

Apparently Honda did a lot of design work around tire selection for the CB11. Here is an interesting excerpt from the Ash on Bikes inteview with Hirofumi Fukunaga, the project leader at Honda who brought the CB1100 to life:

"AoB: What about the handling, were there problems getting this how you wanted with the 18 wheels and narrow tyres?
HF: This was a tough challenge. The single radius tyre profiles are partly reponsible for the light handling feel, and we spent a lot of time carefully tuning the chassis to match the tyres. The head angle and trail were adjusted but also the stiffness of the rear subframe was important with the rider on board as its stiffness is important for giving the right feel. It makes quite a big difference."

You can find the rest of the interview here:
http://www.ashonbikes.com/content/fukuna...-interview

Food for thought.

Nice find, facinating actually, although I wanted to hear more from Mr. Fukunaga. Nice review too with bits of insight to what went into developing the CB1100. Thanks!!

You're very welcome-I'm glad to able to contribute something back to this excellent forum that I've learned so much from already. It was actually my doing research on the bike that lead me to find this forum in the first place!

I too was a bit surprised at how much went into the tire designs at Honda. I often like to experiment with different tires mysef but after reading this I am sort of thinking about leaving well enough alone. I know I would never come close to the resources and research that the factory did and would probably end up spending a lot of money just to make it handle the same or worse...