This is one of those occasions, taken from another forum ......

"Most complaints, Of low rear tire life are caused by poorly balanced rear tires hopping down the road, Even the cheap tires will last much longer if they are carefully balanced.

An unbalanced rear tire can actually leave the road surface, Loosing traction and return to the road surface several times a second.

This not only grinds the rubber off your tire, It damages your Shocks and rear suspension.

Adversely affects your Handling and destroys your rear tire braking, This can all occur and the rider does not feel it.

Balance those tires for that smooth and long tire life and ride quality, Buying quality tires in the beginning will pay off."


I mean seriously, a tyre so out of balance it can get the weight of the machine & it's rider airborne, yet the rider can't feel it happen

Scootypuff will never guess who

Most mechanics only balance the front wheel anyway, not the rear.....

Weirdly - it is more important to balance the rear tyre on a maxi-scooter than on a sportsbike in terms of stability. II can increase the chance of making the bike weave.

Sport bikes are short with a high resonant frequency but lower wheel rpm due to the wheel being larger.

Scooters are long with a low resonant frequency but the smaller wheels spin faster for a given speed.
That means the scooter has more chance of the wheel frequency and frame frequency coinciding and exciting a weave (rear end wobble).

Actually if you have a scooter which has traction control you soon realise why the tyres don't last long because you will find that the slightest road imperfection causes wheel spin at full throttle and the traction control system frequently reacts to this. The two factors which make scooters so bad are the very high unsprung weight of conventional rear suspension designs, and the high low speed torque made possible by the ( otherwise brilliant ) variable pulley transmission which gets even a low powered scooter off the line quicker than most other vehicles.
One further factor is that tyre manufacturers don't invest in specialized tyre construction for scooters they simply use motorcycle types. The brave people that risk putting car tyres on various Piaggios get hugely increased mileage.

Bit off topic but what should I be looking for in terms of life span for the rear then? Think I got around 6k on my 650 vstrom. Guessing it's less on a scooter....?

Very hard to say bud, I get low milage on mine largely due to 'enthusiastic' acceleration, that & quite a lot of motoway miles plus I like to replace them while there is a visible tread pattern over the full width, I get far far less miles than Meldrew (hi bud) gets out of his on the same machine. I guess he still has the Conti' 365's on that he had fitted months before mine, mine were in the bin after about 4 months

Mr Xmax wrote:Bit off topic but what should I be looking for in terms of life span for the rear then? Think I got around 6k on my 650 vstrom. Guessing it's less on a scooter....?

How long is a piece of string?? Some people seem to get fantastic mileages, but I don't. Something like 4,500-6,000 is the norm for me....I guess that I do mostly fairly rapid open road riding probably drags the mileage down. The mk4 Tmax was remarkable for wearing out the front tyre faster than the rear! We shall see with the mk6.

Lol did think it was a string measuring question.

roadster wrote:Actually if you have a scooter which has traction control you soon realise why the tyres don't last long because you will find that the slightest road imperfection causes wheel spin at full throttle and the traction control system frequently reacts to this.

Interesting point bud, could that be allieviated (at least in part) by using softer setting on rear shocks, or is it purely down to torque at the back wheel ?

Bluebottle wrote:Weirdly - it is more important to balance the rear tyre on a maxi-scooter than on a sportsbike in terms of stability. II can increase the chance of making the bike weave.

Sport bikes are short with a high resonant frequency but lower wheel rpm due to the wheel being larger.

Scooters are long with a low resonant frequency but the smaller wheels spin faster for a given speed.
That means the scooter has more chance of the wheel frequency and frame frequency coinciding and exciting a weave (rear end wobble).

Yep, I agree bud, I always have front and rear balanced. I possibly should have added that the author of the quoted post also advocates increasing the tyre pressure for highway/freeway riding to .............. 40psi front & rear