DUNLOP-RTS

The issue of cold tear is not something we can neatly put in a box and say we have it all figured out. I can say that I have observed that colder temperatures often have more tearing. Sometimes softer compounds are more likely to tear. Sometimes suspension settings will tear a tire. while other times its the track and there is nothing that can be done about it with the given compounds at hand. I have observed suspension specialist "have it all figured out" only to go to a different track or different compound and have the tire tear. When they (or we) think its all figured out, another issue arises elsewhere. I am really only talking about the top teams and riders going very fast. when things slow down all these tearing issues go away. I don't want to needlessly alarm slower riders of impending doom, so to keep perspective the above is observed in the fastest of riders. General points for Dunlops (keep in mind these are the compounds available TODAY, there may be newer compounds in the future that don't act this way) : The soft & med compounds (7614 & 7704) will tend to tear more in colder temps below 70 deg F. NOTE: Tend to tear. Not a guarantee. The colder it gets the more likely it is to tear. its not like 71 deg is good and 70 is bad. Its a sliding scale. Newer track surfaces tend to tear tires (of any compound). Some new tracks will tear softs, some hards, some tear fronts, some rears. There is no rhyme or reason, its all about the new surface and the configuration of the track. Don't not try to micro figure this out with your calculator and an engineer, just make the observation by watching others after they come off the track. And with all this above I have observed top riders, winning AMA National races, with their tire tearing and they reported it gripped great and had no issues till they looked at the tire. Addressing the area of tire wear and tire pressure: Certainly if you have the tire pressure wrong, the tire will most likely show more wear. Top riders with their chassis setup very well, will show very good wear, even when they are going very fast. When I see a fast rider's tire that just turned some fast laps and it looks good, I can be reasonably sure he has a very good setup. But the opposite is not the case. If the tire does not look good, it might be the chassis, or the compound, or the track, or the pressure. It could be many factors. All these need to be looked at and taken into consideration before making robotic checklist changes. This is where experience of the track, bike, compounds and pressures comes in handy. That is also why most races are won by the more experienced teams. New teams/mechanics/suspension guys don't have as much experience to draw from to get a quick result. For track day riders the best fix for tearing is to use compounds on the harder side of the spectrum (Not a hard cruiser/touring tire, a harder compound race tire). Next make sure you have a good shock and forks. Stock shock is a major issue with tire wear and tearing with newer riders. Extremely wrong pressures, 5+/- psi from the recommended. Bad riding or throttle control issues. Its easy to spin the tire up off every corner with a 1000cc bike, its lots of fun but not so good for tire wear. And again, the slower the rider is, the less these issues come up.

Josh, What specific BIKE are you looking for a recommendation for? Do you want recommendations for: Street riding? Aggressive street riding (canyon riding)? Track Days? Racing?

You could start with them at the factory height, then lower the front a little (or raise the rear) and see the difference. CF I will throw some advice in the mix. Set it back to stock. That is a good baseline setting for most every bike out of the box. Ride Ride Ride. Have fun doing it. If you are not fast, making changes to the stock shock and forks usually just consumes your time without a payoff. When you start to go fast, get a race shock and fork upgrades. Then the time you spend adjusting things will actually make a difference and you will feel the changes and upgrade. And get a good set of tires. Aggressive riding on stock or old tires always leads to unhappy faces. Your bike will feel like new with new tires on it.

Good question. This is always an area of confusion for riders. What is the right pressure? Lets start of by establishing some basics. #1, we need to understand that every tire may perform differently at different pressures. What works for one tire may not be the very best for another. #2, Splitting hairs on tire pressure is not going to part the Red Sea. Meaning, 0.5 Psi or 1 Psi change in pressure is not going to change your lap times by 2 seconds or more. So keep perspective, if you ride 15 seconds off the track record your not going to magically go 10 seconds faster with small change in tire pressure. Stick to the recommended till you are going very fast. #3, Higher pressure increases stability at the cost of traction. Lower pressures increases traction at the cost of less stability. There is a workable window here, so don't get extreme variations from the recommended. #4, Tire pressure and tire temperature are linked. As the temperature of the tire rises, so does the pressure. Don't try to control this, let it happen, its normal. #5, (and most important) keep your tire pressure set point consistent. Don't change from cold to hot to off the track. pick cold or hot and stick with it. Definitions: Cold pressure is the pressure you set the tires at if they are cold. The tempature without warmers, just sitting there in the pits or in your garage. Hot pressure (also called off the warmer pressure ) is when you set the pressure on the warmers, when the warmers have been on for 45-60 minutes and the tire is up to temp. Off the track pressure is the pressure of the tire as it comes right off the track after several laps. The urban legends say many different things: some say only check hot some say only check cold check them cold, then check them hot, then reset them when they come of the track some say to adjust the pressure till the hot and off the track pressures are the same some say make the warmers hotter if your don't get a 2 psi rise from cold to hot. These are all methods people have used. lets let these go and start fresh. They are not all correct. Lets look at track day pressures for D209GPA, D211GPA, D211GP N-Tec and N-Tec Slicks. BTW: all of these have N-Tec construction. The recommended Hot is 33 front and 23 rear. That is hot off the warmers. Don't change or reset them. You are done. That's it. That's all you need to know! Go ride. Ride all day. Q&A: What if I want more grip? what if i want more stability? Refer to #3 above - take out 1-2 psi for more traction, add 1-2 psi for more stability, but do this only hot off the warmer. Why check them hot off the warmer instead of cold or off the track? Because the temperature on the warmer will ALWAYS be the same, it will ALWAYS repeat the same temperature, that gives you a BASELINE TEMPERATURE to then set your PRESSURE. But the pressure went up when I checked it off the track, why don't I change it then? Because the pressure off the track is linked to the temperature off the track. That temperature will vary from lap to lap. Higher for fast sessions, and lower for slow sessions. You will forever be chasing a stable point to set your pressure if you check them based on the off the track pressure. The off the track pressure is also after the fact, you are done on the track, checking or changing the pressure then will not change the lap times you just did. I just got off the track and need to make a 2 PSI change NOW and go right back out, I can't wait 30-45 minutes for the tires to stabilize on the warmers to make the change, what do I do now? Check the pressure hot off the track, whatever that reading is, make your change (add 1-2 psi or remove 1-2 psi). Note the change ( + or - ) as your NEW hot off the warmer pressure. Example: After riding you feel a 1 psi change higher is in order. you started hot off the warmer at 23 psi, checking the off the track pressure its 27, you add 1 psi making it 28 psi, note down that your hot off the warmer pressure is now 24 psi, go back out. The next day you ride, set your hot off the warmer psi to 24. I am going 15 seconds off the track record. I am running the recommended PSI that is on the dunlopracing.com website. but I think I should be able to go MUCH FASTER if I change my tire pressure. Should I lower the pressure to get more traction and faster lap times? NO, NO, NO! At those lap times, varying from the recommended will not gain you what you are looking for. Stick with the recommended till you get within 5 seconds of the track record, then start making small 1 psi changes. Only make more changes if you can feel the difference in 2 psi up or down. if you can't feel that change, then that change is not helping you, go back to the recommended. Everything is working good. I love my bike settings, my tires are working great, the Saturday track day was awsome. Now on Sunday the weather is 10 deg hotter. Do I change the pressure to compensate? NO! The pressure will affect the handling and stability of the bike far more than the running tire temperature. When you make a psi change you are also affecting the setup of the bike. I am a slow rider, I am 20 seconds off the fastest pace. I can't seem to get my tires very hot. Should I lower the PSI to get more heat into the tire? NO. Again changing the PSI will affect the handling and stability of the bike more than the running temperature. The big thing to remember is not to put the cart in front of the horse. You are NOT trying to achieve a certain temp or psi. Your tire temp is a RESULT of you riding fast or slow. Yes, fast riders have higher tire temps, but not all high tire temps = going fast. Yes you can do things to the setup and psi to get the tire to run hotter, but that would not be a guarantee of faster lap times. that logic would be like "Ben Spies puts his right finger on the break lever, Ben wins races, I will put my right finger on the break lever, I will win races". Not logical or workable. If you are a slower rider you will not have as much heat as a faster rider, FACT. But at a slower pace you are not using the same level of grip as a fast rider. You are concerning yourself with something that is not a problem, Listen closer in the classroom and spend more time on the track doing laps. Use the recommended psi till you start going faster. I don't have warmers. what do i set my pressure at? Set your pressure at 2 psi lower than the hot recommended pressure. Take 2 laps to get some heat in the tire before you start pushing it. Generaly you will get a 2 psi rise from cold to hot. The variable is the outside temperature. Could be 40 deg or 90 deg in the morning when you check it. that is why checking it on the warmer is more stable point to check psi. Cold temps always have this variable attached to them, but this in not more than 1 maybe 2 psi. 1-2 psi would not make the difference in a rider going 15 seconds off the pace, so don't go overboard here. just check it, do 2 warm-up laps, and then ride. Lets talk about pressure changes as the temp increases: Generally, you will see 2 psi rise from cold to hot off the warmers. If you have warmers there is no need to check them cold. 45-60 minutes on the warmer and then check them hot. Fast riders may see 2-3 psi front and 3-5 psi rear rise from hot off the warmers to off the track. there really is no need to check the off the track. It is more important to listen to the rider and what he feels is going on. If the rider likes it, leave it alone. This is importaint: you only need to check rise to make sure there is not a very big rise 9+ psi. Check it once and no need to keep checking it. you are more likely to lower the psi from checking needlessly many times. If by chance you get a very large rise, 9+ psi, you probobly have excess humidity in your tire, the tires are getting very hot or you have stock or bad suspension. You need to replace the air in the tire with dry air from a better compressor or put dry nitrogen in it. This condition will only happen if you have high temps at track like Daytona, Willow Springs and others. If this condition is occurring, and you are a fast rider, you need to be in direct communication with your tire supplier for tech advice and not on a forum. Everything is going fine, I check my psi hot every morning, rise looks good. Then today i checked my rise and I only got 2 psi rise in the rear and I normally get 3. What do I do? Don't change anything. Don't split hairs. Refer to #2 above -------------- Does anyone have specific tire combinations they want PRESSURE advice on ?

With 1 rider going 15 seconds slower, tires and the bike being equal, the variable would be the RIDER. Its not the tire, not the bike, its the rider and his level of experience. I would highly question the slower riders interpretation of how he fell. If he claimed it was from grip, yet another rider is going 15 seconds faster and he did not fall, then it can't be from lack of grip, because the faster rider just proved there was plenty of grip. There are other factors in play that the rider cannot observe, but is attributing the problem to "Grip". maybe the tires were cold maybe he holds the handlebars to tight maybe he makes many steering changes mid corner maybe he chopped the throttle maybe he quickly opened the throttle maybe maybe maybe The rider was not able to determine what really happened, so he attributed the problem to "Grip". If he continues on this path he will always have the wrong reason he fell. He will always think it was becasue of the tires, when if fact he had some other riding issue. Many tire issues are really not issues, just a mis-observation of what is happening.

Hector, Yes we have use the N-Tec slicks and D211GP on the New BMW. With great success. We have many riders in the Eastern US that use the N-Tec and win races on a BMW. Is DTC traction control? If you are asking if traction control works with N-Tec, the answer is YES. Certainly it does. It should work with any tire. Have you tried it? DTC is traction control, and we have had all kinds of tires from, the Q-2's, to the slicks, to the GP-A's, works great on all. CF Thanks...Steve and Cobie, with those two answers Im pretty confident Im safe riding in those tires with DTC...there is a lot of confusion on this issue in other s1000rr related forums of the DTC firing before or after a slide with not the stock tires...but of those people have nothing near the experience of you two with those tires and bikes. So where do I sign? Need a pair of Ntec´s... Hector, Just because someone writes about it does not make it true. You must evaluate whether the person had the know how to write it. I would not look to forums with any Joe rider trying to answer questions about something like Traction Control and tires. I would look to someone that is actually riding the same model competitively on the racetrack. Thier observations will be more valid. Also look to yourself for the observations. You are the one riding the bike. Trust what you feel and observe. You should trust yourself and feel safe with your observations before you over-ride them with other peoples observations.

OK Steve; help us understand the distinctions if you will. On TV we are typically told the compounds of the front and rear tires different riders have selected but what are the factors that lead them to make their selections? I think I understand that a harder tire, especially the rear will last longer and provide grip later on at the expense of traction in the earlier laps but I'm not sure. Also, what would lead a rider or his crew chief to say soft v. medium v. hard? Does a rider ever choose a hard compound for a sprint race and is there a circumstance where they would choose a soft compound for an endurance race? Can you elaborate a bit here? TIA; Rainman RainMan, Great question! Picking Compounds: First off, its not possible to put everything into a small tight neat box and make solid rules like "hotter weather = harder tire" or " Smooth track = soft tire". If this was all true my job would be super easy. Tracks differ from one another. Track conditions can change from day to day or season to season. The tire performance and durability may also change as lap times change. At the top levels of racing, the words soft, med and hard are really just names. If you changed the names to tire A, B or C, the drill would still be the same. So taking a real world example: the rider tries tire B, then tire A, then tire C, giving feedback after each. The order does not matter for the purpose of this example. The riders feedback is most important here. Depending on the feedback, level of grip, consistency (did/did not drop off in performance), and a review of lap times, the team (rider and crew, but mostly the rider) would decide on which compound to select. This may seem simple, and it is a basic format. IF someone then said "but the track is rough, we need to go with a harder tire", would you make a switch if the durability of the chosen tire right in front of you looked good and the rider reported no issue with durability and his lap times were better? or if someone said" we need better lap times and the track is smooth, lets use a soft", would you switch if the tire you chose just ran the best lap time and the rider liked it the best? This procedure gets less important the slower the rider goes. For a track day rider going 15 seconds off the winning pace, his feedback for grip is invalid. At those lap times one cannot determine the level of grip, thus the feedback is not as usable. When factory riders, setting track records, can only notice about 0.5 seconds difference from one compound to the next, there is no way a rider going 5 seconds slower can tell the difference from one compound to the next. After we look at this we also have to note that harder tires do tend to last longer, yes this is true. but in a race situation (like you see on TV) the tires only need to last that race. Choices for track day riders would be based on other factors than the procedure above. Also softer tires sometimes will tear in colder conditions, so a harder tire in colder conditions might be a better choice for track days or even racing depending on the conditions and the compound. This may seem backwards from logical thinking, harder tires when cold, but it is workable. The main point here is there are no hard rules for compounds. Its whichever compound works. Track day riders can usually use any compound. The faster you go, the more the compound can make a difference. Asses the level of rider you are and make a tire choice based on that level. don't assume that Ben Spies tire choice will work well for you at your lap times or track conditions. It may or may not.

Hector, Yes we have use the N-Tec slicks and D211GP on the New BMW. With great success. We have many riders in the Eastern US that use the N-Tec and win races on a BMW. Is DTC traction control? If you are asking if traction control works with N-Tec, the answer is YES. Certainly it does. It should work with any tire. Have you tried it?

OK, so your used you hand to feel the tire. The test for grip is on the track. Feeling the tire with you hand or poking it with a fingernail to determine how "Sticky" the tire, is not a reliable way to test the tire. The true test is how well it works on the track/street. Your observation of the Q2 being better on the street than the Q, is a valid observation. your feeling of the performance of the tire goes in step with the majority of others that have tried it. IF one tire comes off the track and "Feels" to the hand stickier than another tire, that is not a guarantee or an indicator of how well it works on the track. The tire is a package of COMPOUND and CONSTRUCTION. How well they work together determines the performance level of the tire. Some tires are very soft compound, and thus they may "Feel" sticky, but in fact they may not give as good a grip on the racetrack. SOFT does not equal GRIP. If it was true, then we would only make SOFT tires. Or we would replace the names SOFT, MED and HARD, with GRIP, LESS GRIP, EVEN LESS GRIP. Trust what YOU feel on the track. That is the most important factor, what YOU feel. when I speak with riders about their tires, their statement of how the tire felt to them is the most important factor. There is no gauge or gadget that can replace the feedback.

When you store the tires, keep them away from electrical motors (like your freezer) or electrical devices. These electrical fields can emit ozone and other rubber depleting agents. Keep them from fertilizer, it too emits chemicals that deplete rubber. All to often a rider will park their bike next to the freezer or the bag of weed-and-feed in their garage over the winter, only to find the sidewall on one side weather cracked. Just park your bike on the other side of the garage, or remove these factors from the storage area. Putting the bike on a bike stand is a good idea, but not a must. The flat spot will round out when the tire us warmed up and rolled on. Certainly the tire will be contorting heavily when hot, the flat spot not do the same thing. Don't lose sleep over it. Your 2 year old rains are an issue if the tread cuts have lost their sharp edges from use. If the tire was new, you have no problem in a tire that is a couple of years old. Its how sharp the edges are that is the biggest factor in a rain tire being good or bad. Heat cycles: Dunlops are not very effected by heat cycles. Tires wear out, the rubber gets thinner and they lose grip from that action. Heat cycle is not something you need to be concerned with is you use Dunlops. The importance of this is like a glass of water to a swimming pool. Remember my words, because it going to come up a lot in future posts - "the rubber gets thinner and they lose grip from that action".

Dylan, Let me ask a question before I give an answer: When you say the tires felt sticky/tacky straight off the track, or don't feel as sticky coming off the straight off the track. are you saying you felt the tire with your hand/finger or some object? or are you saying the grip you felt while riding? I am trying to isolate the tool used to describe the tire. your hand or your butt on the seat?

Hector, We used the Qualifiers, Q-2. CF And Coches where on Ntecs? I ask this because there lot ob doubts about DTC running with Dunlop slicks in other froums, and where better than CSS to know for sure if they work fine with dtc...Guess all coaches run on slicks and slick mode....? Hector, Your questions seems to be: is the N-Tec Slick the same as the D211GP UK N-Tec but with a tread pattern? Yes and no. Let me be specific- Both the N-Tec slick and the D211GP N-Tec are the same CONSTRUCTION. In that respect they are the same. Being N-Tec, they are low pressure and Zero Growth. There is 1 rear N-Tec Slick, 195/65x17. This is exactly the same width and diameter as the D211GP N-Tec 200/55x17. Comparing those 2 rears they are basically the same, with the D211GP having a tread pattern. They both come in the same compounds. The 190/55x17 rear is 1mm smaller in width and 7mm smaller in diameter (3.5 in ride height) than the 195/65x17 slick. They are very close but not exactly the same. They both come in the same compounds. The 120/70x17 front is the same in width and diameter the 125/80x17 slick. the shape is slightly different but for most part they are the same. They both come in the same compounds. performance of the slick is slightly better then the D211GP. you can see the size and compound chart here: http://www.dunloprac...com/fitment.pdf

I think I can help you all out here with some solid facts and procedures. There are many urban legends regarding tire warmers. When the forum gets setup I will be happy to add my 2 cents worth and help you guys navigate this seemingly confusing issue, and turn it into a very simple one (which it really is simple). Would that be alright with you guys if I jump in?