Pilot Road 4 (ride, bike, motor, highway)

[Last1Out]

Michelin Pilot Road 4 tires. If you ride in the wet, you need these. If you ride in the dry, you need these. If you commute by motorcycle, you need these. If you ride long distances, you need these. Can you tell I'm really impressed by these tires? By the way, you need these.

[87112]

Every Pilot Road tire out has been great. Now if they only made the same tire for my scooter! I have the Diablos by Pirelli on my Scooter and its awesome. The stock tires are a POS, if you want to upgrade a part on your 2 wheel machine, start with great tires.

[Blondebaerde]

Tire discussions for motorcycles make the same sense at oil threads, that being "not much." Why:

Back in the day, I rode a Honda Blackbird. Briefly in 1997, the fastest factory bike in the world with trap speeds of at least 180mph over a measured mile. Yay for Honda, then Kawasaki took that away via the ZX-11. No matter.

I bought a 1999, in 2001, and put 55K miles on it over the next nine years. Obviously that was plenty of tires and other consumables. In fact, earlier Pilot Road versions were some of my favorites, too. Big caveat, though: it depends on usage, and think carefully about what matters to you in-particular. One size sure as hell doesn't fit all.

Hanging out on bike brand and model-specific forums, then as now, I noticed something odd: Rider A and Rider B, on the same bike (Blackbird, for example) using the same tire could have very different experiences. Not extremely different; the characteristics of the tire don't change much, and the vehicle is a constant. Blackbirds are very tough on tires, for example, due to the horsepower. But one guy might get, say, 5K miles from such a tire and the other guy 8 or even 10K. On a bike, that matters quite a bit. Dig in deeper, come to find out Rider A lives in Arizona and does a lot of sport riding on his Blackbird. Whereas Rider B lives in Seattle, a cooler climate, and commutes most of his miles.

Tires need to be selected (very) carefully for (very) specific use cases for (very) specific model motorcycles, end of story. I once wrecked a race bike, foolishly failing to understand that my skills had out-ridden the limits of the front tire, in that case, which promptly washed out when it overheated and became greasy. Had I been using racing slicks or DOT Race, as I should have, no such issue would have occurred. That was 22 years ago. In fact, back then Dunlop, Michelin, and Pirelli were the very last word in club-level race tires, so I learned quite a bit in a short amount of time. Now on the street, I pay pretty close attention to all that these days too. To wit:

“Pirelli Scorpion Trail tires. If you ride in the wet, you need these. If you ride in the dry, you need these. If you commute by motorcycle, you need these. If you ride long distances, you need these. Can you tell I'm really impressed by these tires? By the way, you need these.”

Obviously I changed just a few words. I firmly stand by them, too, for my particulars and run nothing else. Oh, btw: the above applies to my 2014 Ducati Multistrada, on which I ride 90% moderate street and freeway commuting, 5% gravel fire roads, and 5% scraping hard parts in turns at supra-legal speeds (allegedly!), all mostly in the Pacific Northwest.

Scorpions have been lambasted as miserable junk by many other Multistrada riders, though. Who is right? Answer: “Yes.” And, “Mobil 1, obviously, changed every 7.5K miles!”

Try again, OP, clarifying the variables in vastly greater detail: For who? On what motorcycle? Where? Turning lap times at Road Atlanta track days in the wet or dry, or doing 55 in the 60 zone between Muncie and Bloomington Indiana?

First time didn’t really track too well, bad pun intended.

[Last1Out]

You might have noticed I didn't mention track days in my original post (Pilot Powers for those) or tires for riding from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. But for the all around, every day riding plus some nice, long Iron Butt rides with varying weather conditions on all sorts of PAVED roads (OK?), for street and highway use the 4s are by far the best I've ridden in my 50 plus years of this insanity. Tried several brands on my z1000 and 1200 Bandit, some good, some so-so, OEMs to Pilot Road 3s on my ST1300 (a MASSIVE improvement) and recently shod my GSXF650 with the 4's, The 3s were great on the STeed, very good handling and mileage, the 4s are even better. Since it's the tires that separates us from the asphalt, I want the best I can get and haven't found anything better than these. At least here in Western North Carolina, home of the best riding roads in the country!