D606's and lots of highway

I rode about 3000 miles, maybe more... on 606's... the Western TAT from New Mexico to Oregon and back. 15 psi off and 30 on-hiways. I was on a much heavier moto, an '08 KLR with me and 40lbs of gear. When I got home, the front tire was about 1/2 gone and the rear tire was about 3/4 gone. They are very rugged tires and handle pavement better than you might expect.

inspector wrote:

Krabill wrote:

I've found that at 20 in the front it starts to get a bit squirly above about 60 mph on the pavement. I run mine at 18 and it's smooth.
.......

Interesting. I'm one of those freaks that like to go by the book so run it high. The only time I've gone down to 18psi was at an ORV park.

*What kind of wear do you think happens at lower psi compared to higher psi?

I haven't really noticed much difference. I change both of my tires when the rear wears out and since the front wears slower than the rear it still has some tread left when it comes off, so eh, it doesn't bother me.

Well...Unfortunately after 2500 miles the rear 606 was toast. I've been riding all over France, Spain, and Andorra during the last week and the center knobs were worn to about 2 mm. The sides still had plenty, but with a week of off roading coming up I wasn't going to push it.

The tire wore down the most during the 3 days I spent in the mountains. I would ride 1.5 hours to get to the trails. The roads were very very twisty mountain passes requiring hard acceleration to keep up with traffic. I think this killed the tire.

The front MT-21 still looks mostly new.

I ended up buying a tire at a small shop in Andorra. It's the only tire place that had anything that would fit the WRR and was not MX tire. So now I got a 5 year old Michelin Enduro Comp III 120/90-18. At least it will be good for my competition coming up, not sure if anything will be left when I get home 1200 miles from now.

thumpjump wrote:

Well...Unfortunately after 2500 miles the rear 606 was toast. I've been riding all over France, Spain, and Andorra during the last week and the center knobs were worn to about 2 mm. The sides still had plenty, but with a week of off roading coming up I wasn't going to push it.

The tire wore down the most during the 3 days I spent in the mountains. I would ride 1.5 hours to get to the trails. The roads were very very twisty mountain passes requiring hard acceleration to keep up with traffic. I think this killed the tire.

The front MT-21 still looks mostly new.

I ended up buying a tire at a small shop in Andorra. It's the only tire place that had anything that would fit the WRR and was not MX tire. So now I got a 5 year old Michelin Enduro Comp III 120/90-18. At least it will be good for my competition coming up, not sure if anything will be left when I get home 1200 miles from now.

I am sorry you had to experience this. I was feeling like an idiot after all the other replies and now I feel bad not having insisted more on what I thought would happen to you. I might have been able to save you the trouble...
Glad you were able to get something - hopefully it will get you home.

I'm sure the tire would have been fine with easy trail riding and gentle highway use. This just adds to the adventure and experience of it all. Nothing like finding a tire, in the right size, and negotiating price when they don't speak a lick of English. Plus, I got to change a tire in a parking lot! Oh I had a flat about 2 hours later from what I think was a bunched up tube too. Nothing wakes you up quicker than a blowout mid turn on a very steep road. So I got the change tubes on the side of a mountain. Glad I had my ADV Stand!

There's really nothing else I could have done, except for contact a shop ahead of time and made sure they had a tire. That would be difficult because they don't speak English and I don't speak Catalan or Spanish. Shipping a tire would have been unreliable and a big hassle. So, in the end, my backup plan was still the best option.

Just curious, how much pressure did you run in the rear D606?

skierd wrote:

Just curious, how much pressure did you run in the rear D606?

26 lbs in the rear, fully loaded on the road. When I was offroad I brought the rear down to 20lbs.

I've got about 2,500 miles on the rear tire I put on up in Michigan and about 90% of that was spent at 70 mph on the highway. I've still got plenty of tread left. I run it about 22 psi.

Don't get me wrong. During the first 1500 miles of my trip the tires wore like iron. It wasn't until I was riding the mountain passes that I saw the knobs wither away. I've never seen roads like this outside of Europe. They're very long, super twisty, and very steep incline/declines mid turn. It require very hard acceleration/deceleration with constant gear changing to keep the little 250 up in the higher RPMs, especially at 8000+ ft elevation.

I also think that if I was going to just ride the 714 miles home it would have made it just fine. That would have put them around 3500 or so with probably some to spare. The fact is, I have 3 days of a offroad race that I'm currently doing and need as much grip as I can get in the loose mountain terrain. I've never had experience with knobby tires on mountain pass roads (or a 250 for that matter) so I didn't anticipate the increased tire wear.

According to a tire teck I know, A good amount of rear tire wear is when the rider down shifts to retard the speed. If this ie true, the rider could transfer wear to the front tire by using the front brake more and not use down shifting so much for slowing.

Pavement I use the front brake way more. Off road the rear gets used more.