Got my BT023GT today.

Last week I went to take the ST for a little ride. Pushed it off the centerstand and my mind said, something is wrong here. It felt like I was trying to push a car out of the garage. Looked at the rear tire and it was flat. I tried to get the bike back on the centerstand but no joy. With the rear tire sitting so low I just could not do it. Called my wife and we both got it on the stand. Inspected the tire and saw that I had a pretty good sized piece of metal in the center of the tread.
I am one of those guys that will not use a tire with a plug in it unless I am plugging the tire to get it to where I can buy another tire. Actually I don't think that a plug would have worked anyway since the metal really messed up the tire. I checked all the prices at the tire outlets and, as usual, JakeWilson had the lowest price. Free shipping and good customer service to boot. It took JakeWilson three days to get the tire to my door. I checked the production date and the tire was only six months old. That is the newest tire that I have ever had. Tomorrow I will take the tire and my punctured rear wheel to CycleGear and have them install it. Too bad that I had this failure. I really wanted to see what kind of mileage the 023GTs would get. I hope that I can get through a complete cycle before I pick up something else.

That is a bummer, but sure glad you found it this way and not going down the road. Hope it lasts much longer than six months this time!!

I had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago...went out to check the tires and found the rear flat. With only 1400 miles on a new bike, the rear tire had about 1/3 of the blade of a box cutter stuck at a sharp angle in the tread. I have no idea where I picked that up, but there was at least a half inch slice in the tread. In checking tires, i wanted to go with the new 023 GT's, and didn't want to mix the GT with the OEM 020, so I bought both front and rear from Motorcycle Superstore, who had the best price on the pair that I could find with free shipping. After about 400 miles, I love these tires. One of the roads that I frequent has deep rain grooves cut into the road through the corners/hills for about 3 miles. Every other tire I've ridden this stretch of road with has definitely acted squirrely on the grooves. Combine this with sharp curves and hills and it was a little disconcerting! These new GT's don't even act like they feel the grooves at all. They're the only tires that I've tried (out of 4 different ones) that haven't reacted to the grooves, and it gives me a lot more confidence in them and the bike on that section! Now we'll see how well they wear.