Last update for a while on these tyres as unfortunately I picked up a puncture in the rear on Saturday and made the decision to switch back to Supercorsas seeing as I had a set with a bit of life left in them, the intention is however that having had the tyre plugged (professionally and the small screw was in the perfect place for plugging too before people start sucking through their teeth about the cost of a tyre!
) that I will throw them back on once the Supercorsas are done or at the end of Summer depending on which comes first.
So back to the tyres,
After a few local blasts and a 320 mile jolly across to Portpatrick and back from the Edinburgh area I have now managed to rack up just touching 3000 miles since having them fitted a few months ago.
I have been fortunate that for the most part the last 650 odd miles since my last update have all been pretty good weather, the last run down to Portpatrick having been especially good weather and along with the company I was riding with it also gave me a chance to push them a bit particularly as they were all riding S1000RR's.
It would be difficult to try to add anything of any real substance that is going to further highlight how well these tyres actually work across the whole range of weather that you would normally expect in this country and even in the Summer in Scotland
I had been having a few issues with suspension recently which I have almost cured on the front end but in an effort to try and fine tune a bit of feeling back into the front I decided to go back to 35 front and 42 rear for the ride down to Portpatrick as I was a little concerned that the shape of the rear tyre being such a flat profile was causing too much of nervous feel on the front at a point where I would generally want a little more lean into a corner, I had suspected that the profile was causing the bike to handle like it had a squared off rear tyre and putting the rear back to 42 did help a little as far as helping the tyre maintain some shape.
For almost all of the run I kept the bike in Race mode rather than Slick and I only had 3 moments where the traction control kicked in and as per every other time the tyres had behaved extremely well particularly in some of the tastier corners where getting on the power a bit early was relatively safe to do so without too much risk of things going pear shaped.
Braking and corner entry particularly on some of the tighter corners was also consistent with what I had experienced on other rides with there being plenty of confidence to be had from the front end under relatively hard braking, putting the bike into a corner aggressively I was never worried about a sudden direction change upsetting the tyre and in truth the front end has always felt like it could handle far more than I was prepared to throw at it.
In terms of wear and with the tyres now off the bike the front looks like it could do another 6000 miles of the same sort of riding without any issues whatsoever, the rear is getting a little low in the centre which is to be expected from heavy acceleration but the business part of the tyre on the shoulders whilst looking well used does look like it's still got another 3000 in it too!
Again, with the tyre off the bike the rear now resembles a 190/55/17 car tyre and looks completely flat in comparison to the Supercorsa that is now fitted.
So a bit of a summary to what could be the end of review for some time now:
If you are an all weather rider that is looking for the best bang for buck (read mileage out of your tyres) whilst still offering excellent performance in both wet and dry then these really are worth having a look at it.
If you are a fast road rider that is clogging it on down your favourite roads at a rapid pace who then finds it raining round the next corner and is then faced with a ruined ride due to being on super sticky tyres that simply do not like the rain, then these are the tyres for you (although I suspect the M7RR's will tip the balance further there).
If you are a rider that is looking for razor sharp handling and only rides in the warm weather then I would imagine you are still going to look at the Racetec RR K3's particularly given the more sports orientated profile which is going to compliment the bike better.
Hope anyone reading the reviews have found them useful, they have been written in an as objective manner as possible and I have enjoyed using the tyres which have given me nothing but confidence in some particularly awful wet weather and some fantastic fast road rides in blazing sunshine.
