Review: Z6 front & rear tires

[Hewhois]

Greetings!

Have about 1300 (no pun intended :D ) miles on my Z6 tires now. Not as many twisty miles as I would like, but figured time for a quick review anyway. Keep in mind I am no racer, not a professional, this is all subjective, etc etc etc.

I like them :) Have had plenty of chances to try them in the rain, and they did a good job on straights and in corners at sane speeds. Feels much better than the stock 020's, dry or wet. I feel like I am taking the corners just as fast as before, but the Z6 tires have a wider chicken strip on them than the 020's. This is a good thing, means I have more room to play with than before :)

If I get some decent tread wear out of them, say 9k or more total miles, I will get another set of Z6's.

[Bones]

I've got about 4,000 on a set of Z6's. Nice grippy sneakers, they are. They do very well in the twisties, wet or dry. I'd buy them over the OEM Battlaxes again.

[Clark]

I've run completely through my first set of Z6's. Good tires all the way around and a spectacular, enormous, stupindous, huge and otherwise all-round grand improvement over the stock Dunlops. :) (can you tell I really didn't like the stockers?)

I can say with certainty -- 'cuz I tested them;) -- you can push the Z6's far, far past any reasonable speeds and they never get scary. When they do slip a little, maybe from road surface changes, tar snakes etc., they always remain predictable and are, as a result, highly confidence inspiring. The only thing I wasn't crazy about was the relatively short life I got out of them. (5,000 miles) However, I think my riding was the problem and not the tires. I would expect better life under more normal use. Some folks on this board have posted numbers 2x or more than what I got.

Oh, almost forgot, they don't follow raingrooves or pavement joints. The stock tires followed them like it was some kind of homing device. This was a big enough improvement by itself to make me like them.

I'm giving the Pilot Roads a try this time since so many folks raved about them, but they'll have to be very good to keep me from coming back to the Z6's on the next round.

[Hewhois]

Thought I would update my initial impressions. Have about 5k miles on them so far and they still seem to have quite a bit of tread left.

On my recent trip to Northern GA I never had any concerns about the tires. I admit that I wasn't exactly screaming through the curves, lol, but I wasn't toooo slow ;) Even over rough pavement or sand/gravel, I had complete confidence in the tires. Same in the rain.

Looks like I should get at least 9k out of them, probably more. If so, will definitely replace with another set of Z6's.

[sherob]

Z6 review on an ST1300... short one but a review...

http://www.motorcycledaily.com/01march05stfinal.htm