VN2000 Nooooob

[b]Hi all,
John "aka" ScatMan here from Australia .
I just wanna say , what a great informative site , it and the info from this site has now convinced me of going to the DarkSide .
I had contemplated doing it for years now but circumstances just kept cropping up when it was tyre change time .
This time was different as I had extra time to look around for something usefull.
I must say that an awfull lot of tyres you guys have come up with are just not available here down under and in most cases not even heard of .
Anyway I have come up with a second hand Dunlop Sport 300E 215/60/16 Australian manufactured tyre " yes we still manufacture stuff here "
fitted it with no problems with seating tyre bead and promptly re installed the wheel assembly .
Well there is heaps of room left for a wider tyre but the plastic inner guard is very close to the edge of the tyre although there is still quite alot of room in the centre of it .
pumped it up to 36psi and went for spin, well I am that impressed I am happy with the pressure at that so will not play with it till i get some more experience on it .
Clocked up nearlly 100km so far with no problems at all .
Well none to worry me anyway , just as noted in these forums a little more effort in steering .
In fact the only incedent i have had so far is running over a heavyduty power cable while manovering the bike in the lockup .
this involved the rear end slipping a few inches unexpectingly from under me .
never dropped it , but just caught me by supprise as i have done it many times with the tsd rear tyre and never had it slipp away ,
Anyway , on the weekend I will clockup a approx 300 km so will have more of an oppinion then and will post my thoughts .
And if suitably impressed I will lashout and buy a new tyre to give me piece of mind as I have just found a great big string jobb plug in the tread

Welcome to the Darkside John, glad you found us.

I look forward to your next report and we do love pictures.

Hi Doc,
Yes , I am itchin to put some more tarmac under her on the weekend but the weather has been wet here this week and the weekend looks like being more of the same .
The photos will come soon when I work out how to post them on the forum .
I must say though , the few people that know what I have done think that its a bad decission and thats comeing from riders that ride large tourers and cruisers and not croutch rockets.
Its been quite devisive umong us and not something I expected .
But !!!!! then again none of them have done it themselves and it seems not likely to either , anyway each to their own I suppose .
I reckon I know where I am heading and thats all that counts as far as I am concerned .
Apart from this forum , the other main deciding factor for me th go dark was the fact that my insurance company has given me the all clear to use a car tyre as long as certain specs were covered .
Being 10% of
oem width
oem profile
eom load rating
oem speed rating
Of which this tyre , and matter of fact every tyre I had looked carefully at falls well within these requirements .
This insurance company could see exactly where I was coming from when it come to this issue and said that they have had a lot of interest from riders wanting to do the same .

Welcome mate and congrats on your darkside!!!!



Darkside Rulz.................bobby

John, also a warm welcome. How are things working out? Would love to see pic's !

Hi everyone ,
I do have some pixxx to show but i was holding off a little initially because i have still to work out the uploading side of things , but
also I have a close up video cam view of the wheel in use .
Its about 18 minutes long and at about 2.5 gigs in size .
I have managed to get it down to about 190 megs but feel its still too big for people to D/load and view .
Certainly interesting, I had all me fellow Ulyssians looking at me net book at our local watering hole and had them all captivated the whole time 20 minutes
So if any one can suggest an app i can use to get it to a more user friendly size I would be very appreciative .
But in saying that , I reckon on posting the pictures at least.

Why don't you just upload the vid to YOUTUBE, then coply the link to here, so we can all take a look at it.

Hi Dudster60
thankx for the idea , I had never thought of youtube .
I have posted a video on youtube although its not really flash quality compared to the HD original but at least its there to be seen.
Stills shots of the bike ant tyre will follow soon guys
anyway , here is the youtube link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaiCa7_RXsY

Cool vid, thanks for sharing. What kind of car tire are you using, and what psi ?
Thanks again.

Great video ScatMan, I'm guessing you're up around 36 - 38 psi. I didn't notice much sidewall deflection when you were leaning.


I did notice everybody was driving on the wrong side of the road...

Welcome,excellent video,I believe it is the best I have seen.You don't have to worry about the crash and burn thing.Driving on the wrong side will get you before the tire.

Damn, I wish I could find a way to install my camcorder under the belly of my bike. I was going to use good ole duct tape, but it gets really hot under the engine, so that wouldn't work. Any suggestions ? I'd love to see how what my car tire is doing with the 32 psi I'm riding at.

Dudester60
The tyre is a Dunlop SP300E and size is a 215/60/16
Obselete now I think and has been replaced with the SP500E
But as I have posted before , WE Doununder dont seem to get the same models and sizes of tyres that the US and Canada offers and most of the tyres you guys are talking about , we simply have never heard of them here
or they have different tread patterns or sizes.

It is a second hand tyre with about 50-60 percent tread left and purchased it from a local 2nd hand tyre dealer for 30 buxxx.
Although it does have a great big stringjob tyre plug bang in the middle of the tread and has had an alignment problem with worn edges, not that worries me too much at this stage.
I will give this tyre a fair run and will see how I feel in a cuppla months .
If all goes well , and I reckon it will coz I love it with no problems so far I will buy a new tyre for our summer as it gets filthy hot here and there is nothing like knowing the history of things when it gets tough going.

And when it came to the camera mounting , I just used doubble sided foam tape stuck to the camera and to the sump of the engine .
The type you use to stick car n bike decals to bodywork.
I classed the cam as sacraficial if need be , but was actually quite firm and was going nowhere in the short term.

And Doc , your right on the money with the lack of flex in the side wall.
At the time of the video , I was running 38 PSI and had noticed that exact same thing myself so I have lowered it to around 34 PSI.
I may get round to making another video at these lower pressures to see what if any more flexing is happening .
I am hoping to see even more rubber on the black stuff on cornering

As everyone casn see I have got an avatar up but I am still working out how to post pictures of the tyre and bike .
So I may need some hints as how to do it .

vn2000 car tyre

That tire looks good in there ScatMan

I had to edit your post so your pictures would show up, they needed the HTML codes
before and after the URL.
The URL that ends with .jpg (ie http://www.example.com/somepic.jpg)
needs to have the {img} before it, and {/img} after it.
Like this {img}http://www.example.com/somepic.jpg{/img} (except that [ and ] are used instead of { and })

thanx mate

Ok guys ,
I have an update to my experiences with the Dunlop CT .
I have now reduced the tyre pressure down even further , down to 30 PSI.
Well, What an improvement .
The ride is so much smoother than even the last pressure of 34PSI and I seem to have lost the jacking effect comming just off centre line that was definately happening at 38 psi and a little less at 34 psi.
The jacking effect at 34 psi only appeared there if i was looking for it and in reality I never noticed it .
But at 30 psi I cannot feel it even when trying to feel it .
And here is the clincher for me, corrigations on dirt roads are bearly noticable and the tyre is firmly planted on the ground .
The original bike tyre was simply disgusting on the dirt roads and as such I never drove on them if there was any way out of it .
The bikes rear end just wanted to bounce all over the place and quite often wanted to overtake the front requireing a change of jocks .
Now with the ct at 30 psi , it handles the corrigated dirt roads with relative ease .
Have got about 5000km on it now and still looking good especially concidering it was a 2nd hand tyre to start off with.
My experience has influenced a fellow rider to go to the Darkside on his Nomad side car and trailer outfit and so far he is enjoying the ride .
Also another fellow rider is also seriousely concidering Darksiding with his Rocket3.
I have now been told that the tread is in contact with the road almost 90% even on most turns so i may get me arse into gear and do another video so see for myself how it looks .
Wont be 15 minutes long this time , just a few so other people can get the idea.

Just replacing my first CT an eagle GT 215/60/16 on my V2K. Got 9000 miles out of it when I was only getting 3500 with the Dunlop MT. Started out with 40 psi and quickly reduced it a couple of times until I was at 30. Tracking, road crown lean, stopping jostle were all severely reduced. I now ride at 25 psi and have no plans to run at any other pressure. My new tire is going to be a KUMHO Ecsta ASX 225/60/16.

Hi Optomat,
I may try going lower on the pressure a little later as you have confirmed my latest thoughts on the matter .
I probably wont be doing it in the next coupple of months because I am seriously contemplating riding to the eastern states with a few mates to watch the Moto GP at Phillip Island and plan on doing something like 10,000kmor so.
And I will be replacing the tyre with a new one as I have no history on this old tyre and the weather is starting to warm up now and I dont want tyre issues especially as I will be towing a large camper trailer.
The Nomad rider has come back from his run with just over 10,000 km but unfortunately only got 7000 km out of the tyre .
I think there was too much pull on the tyre for the weight put on it and it scrubbed the tyre qickly.
The general concensis is the tyre must have been slipping all the time .
The bike was loaded to the max with a huge 1-1/2 side car and very large camper trailer .
This combination gave John a very poor fuel consumption of less than 150 km per tank full , and to put that into perspective , that is 16 litres per 100 km.
My V8 Holden Adventra 4X4 cruises at 13 litres per 100 km at 120km per hour with aircon on.
Our Rocket 3 member has now gone D/S with a light truck tyre and so far he is loving it and the tyre has very deep tread so hopefully will go the distance for him.