Rear Tire Replacement Guidelines

 2006 Honda Shadow 600, 7,500 miles.

Rear tire is looking quite worn.  Grooves in the tread are all but
disappeared.

How do I know when the tire is ready for replacement (what is the test?)?

Does the rear normally wear out before the front?

Thanks.

 David T. Ashley wrote:

There are usually "wear indicators" that show up across the tread, but
it sounds like you are already past that point.


Mine always do, but I tend to twist the throttle a lot...  I'm currently
on the third rear tire on my 06 Concours, and only just replacing the
second front one this week.

--
"Outback" Jon  -  KC2BNE
outback_jon@ver.no.sp.am.izon.net
AMD Opteron 165 (@2.5) and 6.1 GHz of other AMD power...
http://folding.stanford.edu  - got folding?  Team 53560

2006 ZG1000A Concours "Blueline" COG# 7385 CDA# 0157

 
I did find some useful information at Dunlop's site:

http://www.dunlopmotorcycle.com/infocenter_tiretips.asp?id=9#tip

I'm not down to 1/32 of an inch yet.

I need to figure out what wear indicators look like ...

 
Wear indicators are little bumps in the thread cut less deep than the
rest of the thread. They'll show up flat once you've reached the level
of wear they indicate.

1/32 inch is 0.8mm - I wouldn't ride around with those in anything but
perfect sunshine. The legal minimum thread over here is 1.6mm, and I've
just changed tires where the rear was around 2 and already very slippery
in the wet.

Another reason for switching may be uneven wear: when the middle of the
tire is worn 'flat', it gets somewhat shaky when leaning in and out.

cu
  .\arc

 

I would change my tires when they still had 1/16th of an inch of tread
depth
in the worn area. That's 1.5mm.

Typical motorcycle tires come with only 5mm tread depth on the front,
and 7mm tread depth on the rear.

The front tires have less tread depth because they would be too
squirmy on the pavement if they had more tread.

The rear tire has more tread depth because it's going to wear out from
power being transmitted to the pavement.

You might think that a rear tire would have less traction on dry
pavement when it's almost worn out down to the last 1mm of tread
depth.

But that's not really true. I have noticed that my rear tire begins to
have TOO MUCH traction on dry pavement as the tread wears flat on the
back tire.

In the meantime, the front tire is wearing to a vee-shape and it
doesn't as much traction on the sides to control the attitude of the
chassis as it had when new.

Another aspect of tire wear is that the rubber looses resilience as it
ages and ride quality suffers.