speaking of anti-dark-side flame wars

You know, I was just thinking...

One of the ONLY logical points the anti-dark siders ever actually make about the car tire is that car tires are not actually engineered for bikes, nor PROFESSIONALLY tested in full accordance with scientific method.

Of course, innovation and invention, by definition, are doing something that wasn't done before, and doing it. Duh.

But it's an interesting point. However, something nobody (that I've read, at least) has ever pointed out is this:

Everyone will acknowledge that tire technology has changed a LOT in the last 10 years, let alone 20, 0 or 40.

The antis all keep talking about how car tires weren't designed for bikes. Car tires aren't put on bikes by the big manufacturers. Both true points.

However, the one thing they can NOT say is that modern car tires (the ones we're using successfully) have been test-FAILED either. There's no benefit to the motorcycle manufacturers to do testing on modern car tires on their bikes. They have tire manufacturers making bike specific tires, they get them in gross quantities for their new production. If I was Honda or Harley, I wouldn't test car tires EITHER. And I'd recommend against them because 1) it eliminates my liability for no cost and 2) it helps the tire manufacturers that I'm in bed with.

In point of fact, the only recent relevant fact that can be pointed out is that a manufacturer of motorcycles, Boss Hoss, put car tires on their bikes as stock FAR more recently than ANY study or test of car tires on bikes has been done.

The only downside of darkside is that "IF" I had a catastrophic tire failure, I'd have no recourse against the tire company. IE the ford explorer and the wilderness tires.

And, you hve to remember to remove your tire at 15k and grease the spines as they should be greased when you change tires, but HONDA expects that to be every 10k or so.

Those are the only two negatives I can think of. And #2 is not really a negative. Just a maintenance tip.

Yeah, I'll probably just do it every 10k miles. And you're right about the lack of recourse for non-design use. But frankly, that's REALLY hard to prove on an INDIVIDUAL vehicle incident basis.

Morgan, and Steve-O,

One other thing I'm hoping doesn't come up .........

I have to get my bike inspected in 2 months. They better NOT give me a hard time about it. I don't see why they would but you never know!!

Anybody have any problems getting their bike inspected and getting a valid sticker.

For you guys that don't have motorcycle inspections stickers please just disregard the question and SMILE!!

Just dont tell them anything, they will most likely never notice.

If they say anything tell them its D.O.T. approved