So, the rear tire of the FZ is getting to the point where a new tire is needed. The flat spot in the center is starting to make cornering "interesting". The front is still solid, would you replace both or just hte rear? It's got the super soft Bridgestone on it now. I'm planning on the Michelin Road 3 or whatever. THe dual compound tire with the harder center.
So, should I just replace them both or just the rear?
In reply to Bobzilla:
I'm gonna be facing the same dilemma here before too long. I'm planning to do both.
Will different tires make for spooky handling? I'd do both.
In reply to mndsm:
Usually not as long as you don't mix bias and radials. I only changed the rear on the Harley with no bad side effects. Of course the limits of that bike were a whole lot lower than Mr. Zilla's bike.
I'd buy both and spoon on the rear. Go for a ride. If ok... Keep going until wear bars. If not ok... Spoon more.
I'm never keen on throwing away any remaining tire. Cords or bust!
Both unless you don't plan on leaving the parking lot for your donuts.
I have done one tire before and noticed some "odd" turning issues with cold tires. I would replaced both tires.
Huckleberry wrote: ...... Cords or bust!
With a couple of inches of tire between me and eternity, I want the best couple of inches of tire. Have you priced hospital stays or funerals lately? Change them both.
Huckleberry wrote: ... Cords or bust! ...
I always thought it was cords and bust. 
minimac wrote:Huckleberry wrote: ...... Cords or bust!With a couple of inches of tire between me and eternity, I want the best couple of inches of tire. Have you priced hospital stays or funerals lately? Change them both.
Dramatic a bit aren't we?
My rear tire wears at 2x the rate of the front. I'd be throwing away 50% of a $165 tire if I followed that logic. I change every tire at the wear bars - that one above notwithstanding... I had to get home 500 miles when I hit the wear bars. 160HP makes faster work of them than I predicted 
Now, I'd buy both tires at the same time because "free shipping" at BikeBandit... and if the combo exhibited any odd behavior I'd swap it (usually fine - no mixing bias/radials though). But why waste rubber otherwise? It's not like they will explode from being different mfgs/compounds.
I am guessing that a sticky Bridgestone (battle ax maybe) mixed with a new pilot road would be fine. However, I appear to be in somewhat of a minority so do as you please.
Basically, my thoughts are don't mix performance types that have dramatically different tread compounds to where one end lets go much faster than the other. A Harley tire on the front and a sport bike tire on the rear could get crazy. However, there are touring riders that put car tires on the rear so people can learn to deal with anything.
Those two are fairly similar for road riding and you probably aren't going to be at the edge of either tires performance. Probably.... You did buy and FZ though so you are a mad man!
It's fairly common for sport bike riders to go through 2 rears for 1 front, so as long as the front has 1/2 its tread, I say go for it. On my Kat, the front wore out before the rear, guess I am not that aggressive with the throttle as most sport bike riders. I am putting a set of Road 4s on mine now.
The Road 4s have a harder center tread than the road 3s, so that may be a consideration. I did find that Bike Bandit has a good price on the Power 3 (good bit cheaper than the Road 3/4), just another option.
At 3k miles I picked up a piece of metal in my rear tire. Swapped a new one on and kept the original front. Nothing spooky about it. Now they're on roughly the same wear schedule.
In general changing just one tire is fine. However, if you ride at or near the traction limit you want to keep in mind that you can create an unsettling difference in grip between front and rear. Personally, a push situation on a motorcycle scares the crap out of me so I really try to avoid that. On my bike I tend to wear the rear out at about the same time that the front is giving up grip from age so I'll change them both even though the front still has tread on it. If you're trying another model or brand of tire you could create a similar situation. If, you're a better rider than I (which is pretty common) or a more conservative one (which is probably smart) then you won't have a problem
Get both. My SV650 was the only bike I have ever bought new. It came with some respectable Bridgestones. When the rear was close to done, I bought Conti's based on a lot of recommendations from other SV riders and replaced both tires.
While the Bridgestones had been fine in the dry, in the wet they were borderline spooky. With the Conti's, I went from being super-cautious in the rain to where you just barely notice it like you would in a car. Not sure I would have noticed such a big improvement if I only replaced the rear.
Once you find a tire you are gonna stick with, then you can think about doing the 2 rears for one front thing.
I've had many bikes where I changed two rears to one front.
What I didn't do was mix brands, or tires with vastly different profiles or compounds. You definitely don't want a difference in handling characteristics front to rear...
Always default to more grip in the front. It's a lot easier to save a loss of traction in the back.
In reply to SEADave:
I have to admit these are not fun tires in the rain. These are the Battlax S20 IIRC. Great in the dry but cool mornings they have no grip.
THe other thing I have in the back of my mind is the bike is a 2015, but was built in August '14. The tires have sat in the garage for 2 full winters now. I know I have to be giving up some grip just from the cold to hot cylces and time. I remember how bad my RS-3's got and they were wrapped up and put into the computer room for winter where it stayed ~60*
The other thing... this bike has a penchant for wanting to kill me as it is. I'm not a great rider. I try to stay in my comfort zone but this is a bike that has more capabilities than I will ever use. It likes to go from comfy cruiser to demon bike hell bent on creating death and destruction in about 1.2 milliseconds.
In reply to Bobzilla:
The other thing... this bike has a penchant for wanting to kill me as it is. I'm not a great rider. I try to stay in my comfort zone but this is a bike that has more capabilities than I will ever use. It likes to go from comfy cruiser to demon bike hell bent on creating death and destruction in about 1.2 milliseconds.
OK, so spoon them both on, balance them up and meet me in Austintown, OH on May 20th (evening of the 19th) for some training! I'm doing the Total Control ARC with Lee Parks himself as a pre-cursor to track season in the NE. I even have a room 250 yards away from the location if you don't mind splitting with a total stranger who occasionally screams and lashes out in his sleep and almost always snores like "The Thing That Should Not Be". I try to do one lesson every year just like skiing, w2w racing... etc to banish the bad habits that come from skills disuse in an off season. I'm really looking forward to this one. His book was really helpful to me a long time ago - and I'm looking forward to riding SE Ohio twisties on the way home ;)
DO IT!
http://totalcontroltraining.net/HTML/Schedule.html
In reply to Bobzilla:
I'd change both then.
The stock Michelins on the sporty we a disaster in the wet. I could almost just simply let the clutch out and hold it with my legs with the rear tire spinning at idle. I put a different type of Michelin on the rear when the stock one wore out, I never had any issues with the front sliding.
If I've gotta crash, I'd rather low side than high side, which makes me want to have the better tire on the rear.
No time or money this year thanks to the truck purchase. Anything not maintenance related or specified for the truck is a no go financially. Shoot, I'm not even auto-x'ing this year!
I've been riding since I was 12 (1987). Had a dirtbike back then, got a Razz at 14 and rode that for a couple years. Then bought my first street bike in 1998(93 750 nighthawk). I've been down once.. and that was the front tire sinking into 6" of soft silt dust/rock at the end of my gravel road and the bike going from 25 to 0 in 10". Over the bars I went, bike fell over. County highway waited until the middle of a drought to grade our gravel road and filled in the edge with this silt/powder/rock mixture at the end.
I've been on some seriously fast bikes from 90's before. But this one is a different beast. It's a wheelie machine even when you're not trying to.
For my use on my bikes, I'm with Huckleberry; try just the rear, see how it feels. I try to keep a close eye on both tires, and replace when either visual inspection or seat of the pants feel or both indicate it is needed. YMMV.
Now what was that about cords?
You want to see Cords.....Watch this.
https://www.facebook.com/lorant.ronai/videos/1502009726516719/
A life celebration for a 21-year-old racer who passed after a racing accident. He saved 4 people with his donation of his organs. A friend since he and his wonderful family came on the seen at 6.
Huckleberry wrote:minimac wrote:Dramatic a bit aren't we?Huckleberry wrote: ...... Cords or bust!With a couple of inches of tire between me and eternity, I want the best couple of inches of tire. Have you priced hospital stays or funerals lately? Change them both.
For well less than $150,I don't think so.
I always replaced the rear when it needed it and the front when it needed it. Usually this didn't happen at the same time but sometimes it did. I didn't notice any serious issues with doing it this way.
minimac wrote:Huckleberry wrote:For well less than $150,I don't think so.minimac wrote:Dramatic a bit aren't we?Huckleberry wrote: ...... Cords or bust!With a couple of inches of tire between me and eternity, I want the best couple of inches of tire. Have you priced hospital stays or funerals lately? Change them both.
I'm looking at $290 for the pair, but still.... small price to pay. Of course, I just dropped $1400 on hte truck. Asking the finance manager for $300 for bike tires right now would likely sign my death warrant.
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