dbiasotti

Very good winter day reading about all the excellent tips on tire pressures from Steve and others. Especially the points of sliding/ race pace on the street; very valid point - two entirely different environments and anyone going race pace (or even thinking they are) are destined for a limited life span or at best limited time riding motorcycles . Cobie's question especially piqued my interest about different settings street /track - yes, most definitely. And I would add that for different street riding, yet even more or different settings. Very much agree pressure settings are a trade off of stability, tire life and and heat build up. I would put out there that for street tires, traction is not as affected as I think Steve was implying in his post and stability is more important to maintain. I have slid on the street but typically small, brief slides and almost always due to the road surface or "stuff" on the road; not a fault of the tire or exceeding the limits of traction of the tire (refer to the point of riding at race pace). Track settings have been addressed and should definitely be lower than street. Street settings are in the range of 34-38F and 35-40R depending on bike and mfg recommendations and you should definitely follow your mfg's recommended settings. As Steve said recommended for a reason, but ... For different street riding you should vary these settings as in; - two up with luggage (heavier load) need to raise the pressure especially rear per owners manual guide due to heavier load. - single, regular riding commuting go with std settings - single sport ride in the twisties you can lower settings a couple #'s for max traction, but will shorten tire life - I do 24 hr and multi-day endurance rides (I guess what you would call extreme sport touring of 1,000 miles or more /day). For these rides I bump my settings up to typically 40 frt and 43 rear. I run tire monitors that give me press and temp readings and have definitely seen a correlation between sustained riding at "sport tour speeds" for several hours between stops and elevated tire temp vs life. Higher starting cold settings will keep the temps down and improve tire life. Lower starting cold temps will result in a significant rise in press (+10 psi rise or more) and resultant much higher temps. This results in an overinflated/ overheated tire, especially the rear which is taking all the load, not a good situation. So yes different riding; different environments should most definitely use different settings. I think mainly has to do with how long you are going to be maintaining a heat load on your tires.