Roadster Front Tire Wear

Yeah but We All know you are Full of #### Mr Fart oops sorry Art made me do it
THATS what I expect from YOU HANDJOB tell us some more fairy tales about your cartire bike with the trailer LOL Anyway its good to get all the feedback from the Rocket owners with the various tire combos
 

Couple clarifications:
1. Motorcycle engineers do indeed design the motorcycle geometry, suspension, and other design parameters around the tires. The tire profile, grip, tread pattern, are all evaluated and specified to work as a complete system within given performance parameters. Those that don't believe this simply do not understand how manufacturers design and make products. I do it for a living so I know the processes involved. It's generally a very complex and lengthy process where you have a set of engineering performance parameters you want to meet and have to pick and choose products made by others to meet the specs. The Me880 tires were selected specifically for this motorcycle because they are cost effective and offer the performance the engineers wanted. That's it. Nothing magical about it.

2. There is ZERO proof online that Metzler, or the ME880 specifically, are a poor quality tire or they are subject to so-called "cupping". These complaints are made by people based on perceived problems instead of actual measured evaluation to determine the root cause. There simply are too many variables to take into account to come up with a reasonable answer. Are your roads more rough than my roads? Do you have excessive luggage or extra weight that may cause excessive wear? Are tire pressures OK? You can not, with any amount of certainty, say the tires are the cause.

3. The manufacturer will perform a frame measurement test before assembly, however, the engineers always factor in build tolerances to the design and measurements so no two frames are going to be exactly the same. Factory built frames like the Rocket 3 will have some variance but it should be within factory specifications before leaving. My point is these variance can be fairly large which means a factory frame is NOT going to be perfectly straight and true.

4. A very small portion of the overall Triumph owners, and particularly the Rocket 3 owners, are on the internet. I would argue the vast majority of owners are very happy with their tires and don't experience issues like cupping. As with any car or motorcycle forum, you get the very small group of people shouting loudly that there is something wrong and others tend to believe it through word of mouth. Again, I've seen zero objective proof any Metlzer tires are bad or have problems. Prove to me the cupping or "uneven" tire wear is a direct result of the tire construction or design and I'd be willing to listen. Otherwise, all of this is just subjective noise intended to promote an idea that simply has not been proven correct.
 

Pfffffffffff................

+5 on Metz's cupping - Avon's not

METZLER
Metz

AVON

Empirical evidence, also known as sense experience, is the knowledge or source of knowledge acquired by means of the senses, particularly by observation and experimentation. The term comes from the Greek word for experience, ἐμπειρία (empeiría). After Immanuel Kant, it is common in philosophy to call the knowledge thus gained a posteriori knowledge (in contrast to a priori knowledge).
 
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@UberR3 you sound like an intelligent individual and I don't want this conversation to devolve into a pissing contest, but your comments are simply outside my experience. To wit...

I too am involved on a daily basis in complicated system design. Admittedly I don't design motorcycles for a living, but never the less the systems I'm involved with have life or death consequences and we rarely, if ever, design around one component in a system. We do design, prototype and test the entire system to meet the engineering criteria you mentioned. If one component of the system fails to meet performance criteria it is replaced with a component that will. This is established through testing and field evaluation. In my opinion there is sufficient evidence to show that the selection of metzler tires had more to do with economics than engineering. The tires I've seen have come off a variety of R3's ridden by different people in different parts of the country and all exhibit the same cupping phenomenon. The same bikes, riders and road conditions do not produce the same phenomenon when a different front tire is used. Metzlers may be great for other bikes, I don't know, but in my mind they are a poor choice for rockets.

While there may only be a portion of all R3 owners on this site I do believe it to be a reasonable cross section and am not willing to dismiss their experiences out of hand. It has been my experience that most of the members here only offer their opinion on topics of this nature when they have direct experience or knowledge and as such should at least be acknowledged. Remember, you aren't the only one on here that has a day job and some of the folks on here may be equally or more qualified on any given topic than you are.

I doubt that there was a Triumph engineer setting out design specs for Metzler. I would more readily believe that a Triumph engineer laid out some basic performance criteria and Metzler came up with a tire they thought would fit the bill. During that whole process there were also bean counters involved to ensure that Triumph got the best deal possible on factory fitted tires to keep production costs down. We see this in other manufactured products on a daily basis and I can think of at least one major motorcycle manufacturer who is suffering from this as they have chosen to have a good portion of their parts manufactured in China to a lesser standard. In this instance I think the bean counters held more sway than the engineers.

Just my $0.02 but I won't be changing back to a Metzler on the front any time soon
 
"UberR3, post: 402803, member: 6390"]Couple clarifications:
1. Motorcycle engineers do indeed design the motorcycle geometry, suspension, and other design parameters around the tires. The tire profile, grip, tread pattern, are all evaluated and specified to work as a complete system within given performance parameters. Those that don't believe this simply do not understand how manufacturers design and make products. I do it for a living so I know the processes involved. It's generally a very complex and lengthy process where you have a set of engineering performance parameters you want to meet and have to pick and choose products made by others to meet the specs. The Me880 tires were selected specifically for this motorcycle because they are cost effective and offer the performance the engineers wanted. That's it. Nothing magical about it.

You are agreeing here that the bike is NOT built around the tires!
Stated first were your Key Words - "cost effective".


2. There is ZERO proof online that Metzler, or the ME880 specifically, are a poor quality tire or they are subject to so-called "cupping". These complaints are made by people based on perceived problems instead of actual measured evaluation to determine the root cause. There simply are too many variables to take into account to come up with a reasonable answer. Are your roads more rough than my roads? Do you have excessive luggage or extra weight that may cause excessive wear? Are tire pressures OK? You can not, with any amount of certainty, say the tires are the cause.

I would submit that copious quantities of similar complaints regarding the same brand and model tires across the entire USA affecting all Rocket Models refutes your statements. Your "perceived" comment is slightly insulting and insinuates we riders don't know what cupping or rear tire loss of traction is! Also tell me who does this "actual measured evaluation to determine the root cause" testing for us?

3. The manufacturer will perform a frame measurement test before assembly, however, the engineers always factor in build tolerances to the design and measurements so no two frames are going to be exactly the same. Factory built frames like the Rocket 3 will have some variance but it should be within factory specifications before leaving. My point is these variance can be fairly large which means a factory frame is NOT going to be perfectly straight and true.

The frame will most probably be within tolerances that A tire brand should not affect its performance.
Tires are like 80% of your cornering traction performance, the rider withstanding.


4. A very small portion of the overall Triumph owners, and particularly the Rocket 3 owners, are on the internet. I would argue the vast majority of owners are very happy with their tires and don't experience issues like cupping. As with any car or motorcycle forum, you get the very small group of people shouting loudly that there is something wrong and others tend to believe it through word of mouth. Again, I've seen zero objective proof any Metlzer tires are bad or have problems. Prove to me the cupping or "uneven" tire wear is a direct result of the tire construction or design and I'd be willing to listen. Otherwise, all of this is just subjective noise intended to promote an idea that simply has not been proven correct.

I think our numbers, along with the other Rocket forums are a sufficient sample to warrant concern.
I am not stating the Metzeler is a complete waste for every motorcycle made. Simply that on a Triumph Rocket and on a Kaw V2K (both very large heavy motors) they are $hit!