Are Motorcycle Tires a Ripoff? The Darkside Car Tire Experiment

[Music] [Laughter] [Music] Oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this is the dark side yes somebody once looked at a 200 dollar motorcycle tire and said no I'd rather Jimmy rig a bloody car tire because it saves a hundred bucks and lasts four times as long the idea is neither uncommon nor new since the 1940s when motorcycles were slower car tires were skinnier and all riders were piratical wrenchers of course it's been happening but should it I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy [Music] switching to a car tire easily doubles the load capacity on my little pony I'd be fine either way but consider a gold wing where the official gross vehicle capacity is already north of 1,400 pounds and unofficially well even so T Rohan ain't gonna bring that up with the wife he might call her luggage overweight but maybe she stuffs them in those saddlebags anyway by the time many motorists twist their wrists the weight shifting onto that back wheel can be in excess of 1,400 pounds by itself good luck finding a motorcycle tire rated for that wheels do two things spin and turn and the physicist says because as a tire turns the cornering force makes it want to curl laterally away from the rim and as a tire spins the centrifugal force makes it want to throw outward away from the rim hmm I want to keep us from feeling deflated the tire and rim Association mandates that each of these problem forces be counteracted by two opposing forces for redundancy and we have air pressure squeezing tyre against bead flange to stop it curling inward under cornering force we also have the bead hump squeezing tyre against bead flange to stop the curling and learn under cornering force redundancy meanwhile the rim circumference being slightly larger than the tires stretches the rubber taut against the bead seat to stop it throwing outward under centrifugal force and the bead lock these two curves also stop the tyre from throwing outward under centrifugal force redundancy now two and four wheelers both have these safety features but Elmo one of these things is not like the other a car tire fits a motorcycle rim like I fit a bikini the hump and curves in all the wrong places and still works we still have air pressure squeezing rubber against the bead flange and we still have a rim circumference stretching rubber taut against the bead seat so it works it holds air but we're running without redundancy without the backup safety forces of bead hump and bead lock if you want to slap horsepower on the ground and keep it in a straight line well that's what dragsters and trailers ride the dark side flotation and soft terrain is another buoyant side effect and that massive footprint makes it impossible to throw out the rear on braking the thing is though I never feared losing the rear I practice losing the rear it's losing the front that scares me and on the straights the dark side feels like riding in a rut I'm stable yes and his behavior responds more to the road surface and less to my input I worry as I feel it following depressions in the road dragging my front tire offline triggering the occasional wobble [Music] naysayers say that cornering a car tire puts you on to the sidewall obviously bad but the flat tread Society cries conspiracy they're just trying to hide the fact that a dark side tire deforms as you corner keeping just the tread on the ground and giving a larger contact patch obviously good both are wrong [Music] [Applause] [Music] motorcycles appear to deform car tires to stay off the side wall so the naysayers ain't sand [ __ ] but to piss on Darksiders parade - this is not a good thing see car plies are meant to allow only four degrees of camber beyond that the plies are designed to push back around this axis to encourage the tire back upright that's why darkside bikes want to fall over every time they stop on a banked Road the tread is trying to get back to parallel with the pavement that's also why you need to keep counter steering and darkside bike three corners regular motorcycles only need to be muscled into a turn after that they'll happily stay leaned over but a dark Sider must constantly apply counter-steering pressure to fight the force of the car tire trying to write itself and aside from being a really annoying this is also risky we know there's a finite amount of grip to spend if I'm wasting some holding a car tire at an angle against its will then I have less to spend on that low siding but wait if the dark side tire has more contact patch there should be gripped to spare false friction force between rubber and pavement is damn near described by F equals mu N and has to do with how many Timbits you and your bike ate for breakfast Miu has to do with how sticky your rubber is the surface area of the contact patch no well it has nothing to do with it see fat tires are only handy and that they use more rubber more rubber sinks more heat as well as simply being more rubber to burn through in theory manufacturers can use a fatter tire to get away with a stickier compound a better Mew without having it burn bald so fast but in reality while General Tire didn't have a hot clue that I'd used such a large tire on such a light vehicle so then make it nearly as sticky as it could have bean instead this rubber is silicate 'add for a 4,000 pound car to travel a hundred thousand kilometers the result is extremely cool running extremely long-lasting but poorer handwork [Music] so the bright side of a dark side is that it does work unbelievable but after the first 10 minutes I could hardly feel the difference car tires can be run way longer and hotter temperatures under heavier loads some of them can even be run flat and it's comparatively cheap the dark side of the dark side is that you're more likely to see spontaneous uninstallation and the handling is comparatively garbage we're motorcyclists masters of measured risk we should all be able to weigh up which of these things are more important to us some people care enough about wind in the face to risk wearing a half helmet all of us care enough riding to risk doing it in the first place the great mystery of the dark side is that it should be no mystery that some of us are happy to risk doing it let it go [Music] footnote if you go for a walk on the dark side don't expect anyone to hold your hand few insurance brokers know what to make of car tires on motorcycles and even fewer mechanics will install them that need not mean anything just that when faced with the girthy liability the world asks you to shove it up your own big-boy pants

Channel: FortNine

Views: 3,469,143

Keywords: car tire on a motorcycle, darkside, motorcycle tires, tyres, motorcycle crashes, beginners, mistakes, dangerous, reviews, 2020, 2019, honda goldwing, harley davidson, HD, cruisers, adventure, hacks, tricks, tips, conversion, yamaha raider car tire, size, how to mount a car tire on a motorcycle, contact patch, fortnine, failure, accidents, crash, insurance, rim, gl1800, burgman 650, dark side, how to install, balance motorcycle tires, motorcycle tubeless conversion, spoked wheel tubeless

Id: hEZeR9E3JyY

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2020