rear tire on front

[sandman]

what are your thoughts of a rear tire on front of m/c? thanks ps not a trike.

[bongobobny]

If it's not a trike then there is no reason I can think of to do it. IMHO it would make it handle like crap...

[dacheedah]

not engineered for the front, I would think handling would be an issue.

[2WHEELSFORME]

Lots of people do it to VTXs, they call it going double dark side with the car tire already on the back. They report no handling problems and higher tread life. They do suggest mounting it reverse direction for another whole set of reasons. I myself have no desire to try it.

[86er]

 

Rear tires are designed for acceleration forces and front tires are designed for stopping forces (as I understand it!); that is why they are directional and should be reversed.

 

[buddy]

I had rear tires on the front of all my bikes and never had any issues main reason I did it was for the deep tread 11/32 to 12/32 rear tire over the front tire with 5/32 - 6/32 tread

My last Wing was a double dark side . car tire on rear and rear tire on front never had any issues period!

Going home from B2Moms&Dads in TN pulling our Piggy backer trailer doing 75-80mph with no issues Wing was perfect !! Other than our health problems the trip was great

As for me I loved the set up but everyone has their own opinion

[syscrusher]

They do need to be reversed as I understand things and then any sort of design for water channeling would be reversed as well so they may push water toward the center of the tread in a rainstorm.

 

There really is no good reason for the lack of tread depth on MC tires except that they can do it and we still buy the tires (more frequently). One could look at it the other way and say that it is amazing that they give us so much tread depth when it should obviously be desirable to have shallow tread depth on a MC tire or they would just make them with a generous tread depth like a car tire wouldn't they?

 

Manuf. can sell us lightweight tires that wear at a high rate because we buy them. An MC tire with thicker tread is possibly more desirable than a car tire on the MC but most of us wouldn't truly notice this difference and our riding styles would not demand it of us. May as well have the longer life of the car tire I say. And I am an aggressive rider with scraped lower hard parts on all of my motorcycles.

[Squidley]

Older bikes did it, my '79 Electra Glide has the same tires front and rear. It has the directional arrow stating if it's on rear it goes this way, on the front the other way. Lots of darksiders do it as mentioned with no real adverse effects, but that a whole nother subject....

[IronMike]

I put about 40K miles on a Darkside tire set up with Rear tires on front, on Darkside forums the thinking about it having to be reverse direction was reversed and I then began to rotate it every 5K miles and I can;t even remember the last time I bought a rear tire for the front. The ONLY difference I noticed was longer wear and it enhanced the handling with the Austone Taxi tire on the rear. This is on my Roadstar, and I clicked on this thread because i have 5K miles on my Venture with a Bike tire front and rear, and it's dangerous in comparison to the Darkside set up, so I'm wanting to go Darkside on the Venture too.

 

You can have more action when you have more traction.

 

I just did the PA Elk Scenic Route, I came out of a switchback and a car was left of center on me "Looking for Elk" I hit the brakes on gravel and I was strictly a passenger for about 30 feet. A darkside tire does not do that.

[syscrusher]

I pretty much wore out a Goodyear Assurance Tripletred on my VN2K right when another owner was doing a review on General Altimax HP. I have not tried your Austone, never heard of them till now but I love my Altimax. It is so much better than the AssTT and cheaper too. There is a lot less effort needed with it and it seems to grip even better.

 

I do like the way my Venture handles with std MC tires though. I would not go back on the Vulcan, but I wonder if I'll like the VR if/when I make the switch.

[IronMike]

Well the Austone Taxi tire is on my Roadstar, it handles great but it's no where near as good on tread life as the Vendresien Comtrac, I only switched because the Comtrac is no longer available in the US. They could not figure out why hey sold so many ONE at a time LOL

 

I can't remember how the Roadstar handled with Bike tires, I went Darkside and never went back.

[playboy]

I asked this question awhile back on a trike post. The reason I asked was that the Michelin Commander is available in stock size for the front of a 2nd gen venture but only as a rear tire. Since the stock front tire size is unavailable in a front tire I was curious if two rear tire's would work by reversing the front tire.

 

 

:goodpost::goodpost: