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Well, it was that time again... already. The Bandit needed new shoes. This time around I decided to give the black sheep of the ST tire world a whirl, the Shinko 009 Raven.
First, a little background about me and my riding and what I've tried so far...
I ride a Suzuki Bandit 1250SA. It's a big, heavy, powerful, pig of a bike. We're looking at 500lbs DRY, plus all the junk I lug around everyday on my commute (~30lbs), and it puts down around 115hp, 92ft/lb torque with the intake/exhaust mods done to it. Nothing phenomenal, but enough to kill a tire prematurely.
I'm not an overly aggressive rider. In fact, I'm very sedate in commuting mode. My daily trek to work is 28 miles round trip. 50/50 is sitting in stop and go traffic and lights, the rest going 80mph down 183 or Mopac...
That said, I like to get out on the weekends and kill 500mi in a day whenever the opportunity presents itself. That might be technical, fun roads like the Three Sisters, or it might be visiting people across the state bombing up and down state highways like 290 or 281 (I do avoid the interstates like the plague).
Enough about me, on to the tires...
My type of riding seems to be kryponite to the tire world, at least what I've tried thus far.
The only tire I tried on my recently traded SV was a Metzler Sportec Z6 (?). It came on the bike when I bought it, just mounted, fresh and clean. I put about 10,000mi on the SV, give or take, and for the last 3,000mi I had it, I was paranoid the tire was done and going to leave me stranded due to the lack of a tread pattern down the center of the tire. I could tell by looking at the profile that the tire was getting squared off, but had no way of knowing just how much rubber there was until the cords decided to surface. Good tire, but I'll never buy another without some sort of way to measure tread depth down the middle of the treads...
No problem, traded the SV with bald tires for a new Bandit 1250...
The Bandit came with some flavor of Dunlop OEM.. not sure exactly which model, don't care. It stuck just fine, but at 3,800mi, it looked like a some kind of new polygon your kids will learn about in geometry. Lots of tred on the sides, but my new found intoxication with liter-sized torque melted the middle... Think \_/...
Ok, no biggie, I remembered from the SV boards how enamored everyone was with the Continental RoadAttacks. Relatively cheap, plus they look neat to boot. Good wear (on a 400lb bike), and good stick. So, I bought a set, front a rear.
Great, great tire. If I rode more aggressively, I might just have gotten another pair. Not once did they ever give me a pucker moment no matter how stupid I got with the throttle... Beside commuting, I had many trips to DFW, two trips out to the Sisters, and plenty of Hill Country exploration on the RoadAttacks. 5,900 miles on the rear to be exact, front still looks ok with 7,000mi+.
With 4,000mi the RoadAttacks still looked fantastic. Slight squaring, but nothing terrible. The rear had a plug in it since it had 1,000mi, and they still held air better than any tire I'd ever had. Weeks would go by and they might drop a 1/2lb of pressure...
Which might have led to an early demise.. After a 400mi weekend to a Pie Run, riding around in Houston, and back to Austin, I checked my rear tire pressure the next day... 32lbs or so.
Guess I got lazy about checking pressures... oops.
How long was it under-inflated? I don't know.. maybe all weekend, maybe I picked something up in the tire in the parking lot on the way home... Regardless, with a 1,000mi weekend of 2-up riding approaching quickly, it was clear the tire needed replacing...
Again, in typical fashion with my riding, the center of the Conti was absolutely trashed.
The rear tire size for the Bandit is a 180/55/17, so I'm blessed with an absolutely ludicrous amount of sticky-icky race tires to choose from, yet excluded from spooning on a Metzler ME880 or some other cruiser type, iron-clad rubber.
So what have the tire manufacturers come up with to fit riders with similar demands?
Well, I scoured every board and discussion group I thought applicable. FJR, ST1300, BMW RT, Bandit 1200, SprintST, etc and came up with a list of likely candidates...
Bridgestone BT021 (Dual Compound Rear)
Michelin Road
Michelin Road2 (Dual Compound)
Avon Storm ST
Pirelli Strada
Conti RoadAttack
and...
Shinko 009 Raven
I'm sure there are more, it's been a couple weeks since my research, but I had narrowed it down to the Road2, 009 Raven, or Storm ST. I wasn't disappointed with the RoadAttack, I just wanted to try something different...
Researching as much as possible, the Avon seemed to be a dead ringer for the RoadAttack. Good stick, good wet weather grip, and most people claimed to get around 6-8,000mi out of a rear. No thanks...
The Road2 seemed promising. Longer lasting than the original Road, but soft sides for extra grip. Only downside, $180. Ouch. No real longevity reports either... it's still just too new.
Then there was the lowly Shinko. I'm not a stranger to "cheap" rubber. I've ran Kuhmo car tires on my old Miata and liked them just fine when they were still unknown. I put a Maxxis SuperMaxx on my GS500 when I couldn't afford anything better, and it did just fine...
So there I am. $180 for a Road2, or $80 for a Shinko... hmmm... I'm a recent college grad on a pretty tight budget (who isn't, I know), so frugality weighed heavily... What also weighed heavily was my upcoming trip to West TX with the lady on the back... I figured if anything would flatten a tire, West Texas certainly would.
I've put about 11,000mi on the Bandit since I got it in late June of last year, and it kills me to throw $150+ at the bike every other month on consumables because I'm a cheap ***...
Well, that trip to Sweetwater was last weekend, I put 890mi on my new Shinko, and I think I can give my initial impressions now.
Current pics (892 mi):
90% of that trip was 2-up, and I was always loaded down with our gear. I'm about 170lbs geared up, she's maybe 140lbs in her spaceman suit. We probably had 50-60lb of crap in the top case and saddlebags for the weekend.
I didn't take pics of the Shinko new, it looked like, well, a new tire. The profile of the tire is flatter compared to the RoadAttack. The RA was very round and crowned... they liked to "fall" into a corner so much that it scared me at first, but I got used to it.
The Shinko isn't that way. It's a gradual, rounded curve. It requires a little more effort to get set in a line, but nothing bad. The tread pattern is attractive, nothing eye catching, but it looks sporty and tough.
Tread depth, IIRC, was 7mm down the center new, with less on the sides, around 5mm.
After this weekend of tire-torture, I still have 6mm in the middle, and 5mm on the sides. I still haven't had a chance to really rail on the tire, as evidenced by the unused rubber near the edges, but so far they seem to stick just fine. I have no doubt they'll reach their edges drama-free.
So this begins my chronicle for the 009 Raven. I couldn't find a good, updated review with mileage reports, so I'm attempting to do so here. I'll try to post pics every 1,000mi or so... stay tuned. I'm hoping to get at least the same mileage as I got from the RA, at half the price, but we'll see...
trey
First, a little background about me and my riding and what I've tried so far...
I ride a Suzuki Bandit 1250SA. It's a big, heavy, powerful, pig of a bike. We're looking at 500lbs DRY, plus all the junk I lug around everyday on my commute (~30lbs), and it puts down around 115hp, 92ft/lb torque with the intake/exhaust mods done to it. Nothing phenomenal, but enough to kill a tire prematurely.
I'm not an overly aggressive rider. In fact, I'm very sedate in commuting mode. My daily trek to work is 28 miles round trip. 50/50 is sitting in stop and go traffic and lights, the rest going 80mph down 183 or Mopac...
That said, I like to get out on the weekends and kill 500mi in a day whenever the opportunity presents itself. That might be technical, fun roads like the Three Sisters, or it might be visiting people across the state bombing up and down state highways like 290 or 281 (I do avoid the interstates like the plague).
Enough about me, on to the tires...
My type of riding seems to be kryponite to the tire world, at least what I've tried thus far.
The only tire I tried on my recently traded SV was a Metzler Sportec Z6 (?). It came on the bike when I bought it, just mounted, fresh and clean. I put about 10,000mi on the SV, give or take, and for the last 3,000mi I had it, I was paranoid the tire was done and going to leave me stranded due to the lack of a tread pattern down the center of the tire. I could tell by looking at the profile that the tire was getting squared off, but had no way of knowing just how much rubber there was until the cords decided to surface. Good tire, but I'll never buy another without some sort of way to measure tread depth down the middle of the treads...
No problem, traded the SV with bald tires for a new Bandit 1250...
The Bandit came with some flavor of Dunlop OEM.. not sure exactly which model, don't care. It stuck just fine, but at 3,800mi, it looked like a some kind of new polygon your kids will learn about in geometry. Lots of tred on the sides, but my new found intoxication with liter-sized torque melted the middle... Think \_/...
Ok, no biggie, I remembered from the SV boards how enamored everyone was with the Continental RoadAttacks. Relatively cheap, plus they look neat to boot. Good wear (on a 400lb bike), and good stick. So, I bought a set, front a rear.
Great, great tire. If I rode more aggressively, I might just have gotten another pair. Not once did they ever give me a pucker moment no matter how stupid I got with the throttle... Beside commuting, I had many trips to DFW, two trips out to the Sisters, and plenty of Hill Country exploration on the RoadAttacks. 5,900 miles on the rear to be exact, front still looks ok with 7,000mi+.
With 4,000mi the RoadAttacks still looked fantastic. Slight squaring, but nothing terrible. The rear had a plug in it since it had 1,000mi, and they still held air better than any tire I'd ever had. Weeks would go by and they might drop a 1/2lb of pressure...
Which might have led to an early demise.. After a 400mi weekend to a Pie Run, riding around in Houston, and back to Austin, I checked my rear tire pressure the next day... 32lbs or so.
Guess I got lazy about checking pressures... oops.How long was it under-inflated? I don't know.. maybe all weekend, maybe I picked something up in the tire in the parking lot on the way home... Regardless, with a 1,000mi weekend of 2-up riding approaching quickly, it was clear the tire needed replacing...
Again, in typical fashion with my riding, the center of the Conti was absolutely trashed.
The rear tire size for the Bandit is a 180/55/17, so I'm blessed with an absolutely ludicrous amount of sticky-icky race tires to choose from, yet excluded from spooning on a Metzler ME880 or some other cruiser type, iron-clad rubber.
So what have the tire manufacturers come up with to fit riders with similar demands?
Well, I scoured every board and discussion group I thought applicable. FJR, ST1300, BMW RT, Bandit 1200, SprintST, etc and came up with a list of likely candidates...
Bridgestone BT021 (Dual Compound Rear)
Michelin Road
Michelin Road2 (Dual Compound)
Avon Storm ST
Pirelli Strada
Conti RoadAttack
and...
Shinko 009 Raven
I'm sure there are more, it's been a couple weeks since my research, but I had narrowed it down to the Road2, 009 Raven, or Storm ST. I wasn't disappointed with the RoadAttack, I just wanted to try something different...
Researching as much as possible, the Avon seemed to be a dead ringer for the RoadAttack. Good stick, good wet weather grip, and most people claimed to get around 6-8,000mi out of a rear. No thanks...
The Road2 seemed promising. Longer lasting than the original Road, but soft sides for extra grip. Only downside, $180. Ouch. No real longevity reports either... it's still just too new.
Then there was the lowly Shinko. I'm not a stranger to "cheap" rubber. I've ran Kuhmo car tires on my old Miata and liked them just fine when they were still unknown. I put a Maxxis SuperMaxx on my GS500 when I couldn't afford anything better, and it did just fine...
So there I am. $180 for a Road2, or $80 for a Shinko... hmmm... I'm a recent college grad on a pretty tight budget (who isn't, I know), so frugality weighed heavily... What also weighed heavily was my upcoming trip to West TX with the lady on the back... I figured if anything would flatten a tire, West Texas certainly would.
I've put about 11,000mi on the Bandit since I got it in late June of last year, and it kills me to throw $150+ at the bike every other month on consumables because I'm a cheap ***...
Well, that trip to Sweetwater was last weekend, I put 890mi on my new Shinko, and I think I can give my initial impressions now.
Current pics (892 mi):
90% of that trip was 2-up, and I was always loaded down with our gear. I'm about 170lbs geared up, she's maybe 140lbs in her spaceman suit. We probably had 50-60lb of crap in the top case and saddlebags for the weekend.
I didn't take pics of the Shinko new, it looked like, well, a new tire. The profile of the tire is flatter compared to the RoadAttack. The RA was very round and crowned... they liked to "fall" into a corner so much that it scared me at first, but I got used to it.
The Shinko isn't that way. It's a gradual, rounded curve. It requires a little more effort to get set in a line, but nothing bad. The tread pattern is attractive, nothing eye catching, but it looks sporty and tough.
Tread depth, IIRC, was 7mm down the center new, with less on the sides, around 5mm.
After this weekend of tire-torture, I still have 6mm in the middle, and 5mm on the sides. I still haven't had a chance to really rail on the tire, as evidenced by the unused rubber near the edges, but so far they seem to stick just fine. I have no doubt they'll reach their edges drama-free.
So this begins my chronicle for the 009 Raven. I couldn't find a good, updated review with mileage reports, so I'm attempting to do so here. I'll try to post pics every 1,000mi or so... stay tuned. I'm hoping to get at least the same mileage as I got from the RA, at half the price, but we'll see...
trey
. (I am still on the same front tire) I was commuting to San Antonio all last year rain or shine.(and did it rain) I have fond this to be an EXCELLENT dry & wet weather tire.
I was running it is pour sunshine
. (I Ride a GSX1100G Witch is a kin to the Bandit.)