Bike tyres look more like road legal track day tyres. If they provide more grip, then why don't more cars wear tyres like these on the road? With less grooves, do they compromise on wet grip?

[Edited by scoobysnacks - 7/14/2002 9:18:27 PM]

Good grief, you should see the tyres on my son's trials mountain bike!!!! The damn things are nearly as wide as my Scooby tyres, and cost £30 each!!!!!!!!!! And he certainly doesn't get 10000 miles from a set!!!! Grrrrrrrrrr

Bike tyres work suprisingly well in the wet even if they have not got much tread pattern (there to disperse the water) because the contact patch on a bike tyre is probably 1/3 of the patch of a car tyre they can cut through surface water much better than a car tyre as the patch is more narrow. IT is very very hard to aqua- plane a bike cos' of this. A bike tyre is like a dry slick in that it gets its grip through stickiness and tread compound.( its somthing like that I think???)

I get about 2500k - 3000k mile out of a rear on my bike and at £120+ is a pain in the ass.

Imagine having to swap tyres every 3000 miles in your car....I think i'll stick to my toyo's. I can just about get 10K out of them

Gixxer is right. (BTW 'Gixxer' is biking slang for 'GSXR' which is a paricularly fast breed of Suzuki bikes.)

Because of the curved profile of a bike tyre, they don't aquaplane nearly so readily. But they can. Hence bike racers running on treaded tyres in the wet.

The current fashion for almost slick bike tyres has a lot to do with their massive power outputs (which would rip up heavily treaded tyres) and the fact that most superbike riders only go out when it's warm and dry.

Riding a big bike on semi-slick tyres is not much fun in the wet. Everyday bikers run tyres with more rain grooves.

Richard.

PS edited to add that the semi-slicks fitted to cars like the Lotus Elise are, while legal, mega-scary in the wet.

[Edited by Hoppy - 7/16/2002 2:20:10 AM]