Tire Pressure ??
 

Ok I am really new to this sportbike riding. I have michelin pro pilot tires. previous owner ran them at 22lbs front and rear. any suggestions. typically one up lots of curves, i live here at the dragon. thanks in advance.

theres a few different threads about tire pressure. 36/42 is the norm. you might conisder running them slightly softer if your bike only ever sees twisties.

22 seems pretty low as far as good tire grip/wear for normal riding...hard sport/twisty riding definitely can benefit from lowering the pressure, but maybe not that much.

VTR (Cold Pressure)
-Street Front 36
Rear 34

-Track Day Front 32
Rear 31


SuperMoto Front 21
Rear 20

thanks ya'll i thought that was low. i am gonna up it to the recommended settings. thumper is that you on the tail at killboy shadetree corner?

32f/30r is a good place to start.

tim

Yep Yep, that be the avatar shot location, got one somewhere of the VTR and a knee down there as well; however i much more prefer the SuperMotard on the D-Ragon.



P.S. Don't go above 38 lbs , you will be riding on rocks

Lowering tire pressure will give you more grip by warming the tire, During track days I drop it from 28 to 32 depending of the temperature, this grip comes at a fair price, gas consumption goes up and stability goes down. Follow the tire manufacturer specs.

Why the recommendations for the same or lower rear tire pressure? Is the stock # (42) for the possibility of 2-up riding?

Reccomended is exactly that, you don't actually run reccomended pressure on your car tires as well do you.

Drop it, you will like it.

see i always ran more in the front than rear comming off dirtbikes but noticed that alot of racers use higer rear than front. so i run 32/34 for twisties and 36/38 for the street. I have pilot power 2cts

36/36 is what I run for simplicity. Works fine on the twisties. 22 seems a bit low as mentioned by others. Tires will wear much too fast.

The recommendation is a starting point... Usually it's for rather sedate riding, and possibly 2-up... If you do lot's of highway, keep it close'ish to recommended and you get good wear... Otherwize drop it down a tad for mixed conditions... and down real low for track...

That's cuz the front isn't actually steering on dirt... it's more tracking...:D If you think about it you realize you generaly do a lot more steering with the rear...:)
On tarmac the front needs to have more traction to steer... But this is very tire specific... The PP2CT's like lower front... Some other tire's don't like that at all...

thanks for the input. i put them up to 30f 32r. gonna ride thursday on the dragon and other roads around here. i'm sure it'll be better. i am really likeing this bike. my other ride is a hd nightrain. it's a pig compared to the vtr but fun in it's own way.

My two cents, and it seems I'm a minority of one here, but the hell with it.

Spend a few days riding all kinds of pavement with the tires inflated to the spec max of Honda and the tire manufacturers. That would be 41-42 psi rear and 36 psi front.

You might find that your suspension is way more compliant, that you get better mpg, and if you did it long enough, that your tires last a lot longer.

It might make sense to lower the front 5 or 6 psi and the rear 10 or 12 psi for a balls out track day on a smooth track, but for every day riding it doesn't make sense to me.

I've run 36 front, 38 rear ever since I started using Qualifiers. I'm on my 3rd rear now, and I got 7k to 8k miles on the first 2. And that's with a lot of commuter miles with some twisties thrown in on the weekends.