I'm starting to get my ducks in a fow for my 5000 mile Canada trip this summer. Of course tires for my 94 nonABS ST1100 are at the front of my mind. So after through almost every tire thread I can find, I came across something I hadn't considered.
I'm looking for mileage and decent handling ( I don't drag my pegs) so don't think I could go to the CT dark side, but I when searching front tire threads, I stumbled acoss a few posts where guys were putting rear tires on the front end of their bikes. Whoa, that's like "grey side"! The main reason I can determine they'd do this is mileage, because rear tires have tons thicker rubber than the fronts do.
There's lots of discussion about spin directions and all, and I've read all that I could find, many that I couldn't understand cause I'm not a mechanical engineer, however it seems to me after fumbling through them, then going to tire sites and looking closely at the tread sypes on lots of different tires, the direction of the tread for a front tire is the reverse of what you'd find on a rear tire. I actually noticed this myself years ago when I put my first Metzler on my XS1100 in 1981. Looking at the sype direction, I thought for sure they'd put it on backwards, but the arrow on the sidewall said it was supposed to look "backwards". So flipping a rear tire so that it spins backwards and mounting it on the front would put the tread "backwards" in line with what you would usually find on a front tire.
I know lots of folks would say to never do this. I suppose those are the same folks who would tell me it's instant death to run a radial front tire and a bias rear, something that I've been doing on my V65 Sabre for ten years since rear radials are really hard to find for that beast. But, I'm a thinking out of the box sort of guy, so I'm going to order a Bridgestone BT45 110/80H 18 that I'm going to flip and put on the front.
I'd love to hear from anyone with any "actual" experience going to the grey side with this, as in having done this and survived to tell about it. And I suppose it's ok for all the nay sayers who have no actual experience to chime in too!
I'm looking for mileage and decent handling ( I don't drag my pegs) so don't think I could go to the CT dark side, but I when searching front tire threads, I stumbled acoss a few posts where guys were putting rear tires on the front end of their bikes. Whoa, that's like "grey side"! The main reason I can determine they'd do this is mileage, because rear tires have tons thicker rubber than the fronts do.
There's lots of discussion about spin directions and all, and I've read all that I could find, many that I couldn't understand cause I'm not a mechanical engineer, however it seems to me after fumbling through them, then going to tire sites and looking closely at the tread sypes on lots of different tires, the direction of the tread for a front tire is the reverse of what you'd find on a rear tire. I actually noticed this myself years ago when I put my first Metzler on my XS1100 in 1981. Looking at the sype direction, I thought for sure they'd put it on backwards, but the arrow on the sidewall said it was supposed to look "backwards". So flipping a rear tire so that it spins backwards and mounting it on the front would put the tread "backwards" in line with what you would usually find on a front tire.
I know lots of folks would say to never do this. I suppose those are the same folks who would tell me it's instant death to run a radial front tire and a bias rear, something that I've been doing on my V65 Sabre for ten years since rear radials are really hard to find for that beast. But, I'm a thinking out of the box sort of guy, so I'm going to order a Bridgestone BT45 110/80H 18 that I'm going to flip and put on the front.
I'd love to hear from anyone with any "actual" experience going to the grey side with this, as in having done this and survived to tell about it. And I suppose it's ok for all the nay sayers who have no actual experience to chime in too!