I always ran my tyres on the R1 at the pressures in the book F36 R42, after the tyres fitting today, the spannerman told me the pressures in the Yamaha book is way too high as it's covers all eventualities, more or less. He reckons 32 front & 34 rear & on the way home they felt great, but they are new. Any comments before i head out at 6:30am to properly get them up to temp... -- Nige, 'Candygram for Mongo' R1
I reckon he's gone a bit low for road, at a guess I'd have said 34F/38R and for track 34F/32R if you ride very hard. I know the front is higher and the rear looks very low for track, but it works well at extremes. I run my CBR6 at 31F/29R for track, as opposed to the recommended 32F/36R and it is just right. My pressures were recommnded to me by the guys at Holbeach Tyres, who attend trackdays and race meetings, and Danny ran lower than what I quoted for the R1 at both ends on his race ZX10R on road based race tyres like Racetechs. Best thing to do is have a little experiment with them, using the Yamaha recommended figures as a baseline. 36F/42R is very high though and many riders do drop them a few psi
I thought it seemed a bit low, but it rode fucking lovely, he also says these tyres are very quick to warm up & grip like ****.... I'll give 'em a really good hiding tomorrow morning on roads i really know, see how they go... Cant wait for the fork & damper re-build now... To be fair, the guys really do know thier stuff & he especially knows the 98-2000 R1's as he race prepped loads of em. All good fun -- Nige, 'Candygram for Mongo' R1
In that case go with what the man says, he obviously knows the tyres on that model of bike and can recommend - seems low to me but he probably knows best.
Apparently, the construction of these tyres is very different too. They look bloody odd too, layers of rubber over layers etc, looks very strange... -- Nige, 'Candygram for Mongo' R1
I'm glad you said modern tyres - try those pressures on the CBX or the Wing, and they're borderline unrideable. Well, more unrideable than normal, anyway.
Wandering off a tad, the Velocette LE manual had a chart of rider weight versus tyre pressures. ISTM that 60 years later the weight of the rider should still be a factor.
Go on, then. I was waiting for you to tell me what F27/R25 equates to when hot - wouldn't come up to, say, 36/42, I suppose?
Possibly not, with modern radial tyres, constructed in a modern way, on modern machinery, being used on modern bikes that weigh less than a battleship while having the power to pull the skin off a rice pudding, Grandad. You're not just comparing apples with oranges, but woolly mammoths with greyhounds here. I suspect that MotoGP teams might factor in the mass of the particular rider, as well as their style, the track surface type/temperature and ambient temperature and humidity and adjust tyre pressures on the grid to take account of all the above, just to possibly give them the advantage of 0.001s per lap in case the other teams haven't got it quite right - but I seriously doubt your old Velocette nor its rider would be able to tell the difference between five pounds per square inch either way, eh? And that's all assuming your Velocette has been fitted with the right sized tubes in its tyres in the first place - fitted with big old spoon handles in the back yard, while waiting for the saucepan over the side of the fire to get up to temperature so you could boil your chain in the latest magical mix of tallow, grease and sheep's menses.
I'm fine today, not a touch of pain or discomfort - it looks like the nightmare has finally ended. Mind you, I have been taking things very easy and spending time to recover from yesterday's traumatic events. I'll tell you about them in person because it's rather visual as well.
Hence the not rushing about suggestion. You can tell me all about it as you balance my carbs, dear ;-)) I shan't be peering down your now-cavernous Jap's Eye, though - not for ready cash money, Spicky.
Haha, Having read the pressures on Danny's 675 hot you're not far wrong. When we ran that bike for the first time in the Triple Challenge at 2008 BSB support race, the Michlin tyre techs wouldn't give us a reliable cold figure, so they told me to start at a rough base figure they plucked fom nowhere, then told Danny to go out and push as hard as he dare for one flying lap then come in and have them read in pitlane and adjusted to the hot figure they neded to be at. We did that, it worked and when the bike had cooled down fully I took cold readings and used those all weekend (marker penned on duct tape to the fork and swingarm). Danny got a 2nd, it would have been a win but the dopey **** missed that by 2/1000ths of a second because he started his overtake just a fraction too late, so hadn't passed the start in 1st on the lap before the race was stopped. Not bad for his first ride on that bike, and we both got on telly too.
Hah! Fortasmuch, see. Only a featherweight, the 675, though. Might be a bit different for heavier bikes.
It runs similar tyre pressures in the 180 rear tyre and takes the same 120/70 front. It doesn't weigh much less than the ZX10R in race trim. It does handle far better though, as I've found out on the occasions I've ridden it on track. The ZX10R was an unweildy beast that I found hard to turn because the damper was always cranked up to near max and needed to be because it shook its head all over the place, but the 675 falls on its ear rather rapidly... too rapidly sometimes, as it's not as flighty and has the damper set much softer. That 675 is an absolute dream to ride and I'm convinced I could do seriously quick times on it if it wasn't Danny's only race bike - I always have this fear of crashing it because he's always racing a few days after I get on it. I don't get that way when I'm caning Ratty's ZX6R B1H because it's not a race bike, so I just ride the **** out of it, and I'm quicker round Mallory than he is on his own bike. Not bad considering he was Yamaha Past Masters champion and rode 2 seasons in the top 5 of the Aprilia RS250 series.
Gunna change on rider style and conditions obviously. 42 is a bit high IMHO. Just for future notice, don't ride a Blackbird in drizzly wet conditions on country roads trying to keep up with an ex national racer when the tyre is deflating to about 9 PSI. I was slipping back from him (strange that) and when we stopped the rear tyre had steam coming off it from the heat generated from the flexing of the tyrewall. I had just topped the tyres up so couldn't figure out why I couldn't get traction. There was a serious amount of steam coming off the back tyre. It was quite funny at the time [1], but I was lucky not to deck the thing. [1] I recall getting stuck behind a car and got a short uphill straight and gunned it, not only did I have a deflating back tyre, but I was riding over a cattle crossing (not a grid) so there was cow shit all over the road. While it was lightly raining. While I am on full throttle trying to catch up with Mick. Entertaining is an understatement.
