Front Tyres for 16" wheel

Time to replace the front tyre

What make of tyre you got on your bike ?

Bridgestone Battlax BT-45 Sport Touring Front Tire

First (street) tire I ever had to change cause the sides were worn (Dual Compound).

Same tire for back works too, but the 1000 can still melt the center down.


Good Price too.

Hi, If you are fancying BT45s then you may want to wait till January as Brigestone are replacing it with a whole new BT46. Tyre sizes aren’t announced yet though. 2020 tyre announcement
Hope this helps :wink:


The new BT46 better have Dual Compound, or I’m out.
All the Marketing Propaganda I can find just says “new improved compound”.
The BT45 Front Tire maintains its profile as it wears, or even goes to a V pattern like a racing slick, wonderful,…
The odder Front I like is the Metzler ME33 Laser, but it wears flat quickly, feels awful when even 1/2 worn, but best ever in rain, sticky rubber.
Back Tire still wears flat on me, must be the way I ride.

My choice is for the BT45s. Have never had a tyre induced oops moment on them. The front feels very planted, but I seem to ride it hard, as I use 2 front for 1 rear. This is possibly due to the roads around here in SE New South Wales and Canberra region, being very twisty, and quite mountainous, or what we call mountainous out here! Other factor is I pump the shock up a bit until it loads the front more and gives me better ground clearance.
Will be interested to see what the BT 46s are like, hopefully they’ll make our sizes, seems to be a recognition by some manufacturers of the classic bike market potential.

I posted this elsewhere under a different thread, but you may find it helpful in your purchase decision.

Road tyres for cars and bikes are made from synthetic rubber. This is how the various “compounds” can be produced.

Some manufacturers use the low sulphur vulcanising process, which is environmentally impeccable but bad news for any other consideration.

When a tyre is on load, the rolling radius at the bottom is smaller than at the top. As the wheel has a constant angular velocity, the linear velocity is therefore variable. The bit in contact with the road is going slower than the rest of the tyre, so the front of the contact area is being compressed, and the back of it is being stretched.

Now add the shear force of it being cranked over into the mix and you have a small portion of the tyre carcass trying to withstand four conflicting forces.

Low sulphur vulcanising reduces the moulding pressure and temperature, which reduces inter ply cohesion and inter ply shear stress tolerance, so eventually the combination of compression, tension, shear and tortion experienced in normal operation results in ply separation if any one of the forces exceeds design limitation.

The best thing to do is to avoid tyres that are manufactured using the low sulphur process.

To that end, Bridgestone, Dunlop, Michelin, Metzeler and Conti are your best bet.

I knew those Michelin tyre conferences would come in handy one day…

1 Like

Interesting as Pirelli and metzler are basically the same tyre.Not on your list is Avon,the roadrider range is very popular with VF owners

Different vulcanising techniques and different ply layup, though.

Attn Gazb,
Is that what happened to you last year? Tyre split across the front, was it a Pirelli?

High Andy, it was a pirelli sport demon and I think it lived up to the demonic side of the name far more than the sport, I’m sticking to bridgestones from now on!

Garyb

Hi Gaz,
Yes I thought it was a Pirelli, I will steer clear of those. Thanks ChrisB for the info about low sulphur technology!