FJRiders.com

Had a good weekend on the FJR. Wife and I rode back roads for awhile Saturday morning. We haven't had much of a chance to ride together lately. Around noon we went to a Tiki Bar restaurant for a soft drink and meal. Really neat place we had never been to before. Food was actually very good.

https://www.crumpslanding.com/

You can get there by water or land. They even have a special small parking lot up front for motorcycles.

The weather was nice this weekend. Not too hot yet.

Sunday morning I went for my usual ride. Anybody that came to FWG know the roads. Fort Island trail and Ozello trail. Always try to hit them Sunday morning.

Installed a strip of heat shield to the underside of my panniers. The new 14" Delkevics are a bit higher (closer) than stock pipes and seem to get hotter.

Parked my '07 for a while. B/c I bought a 37K mile '13!! WooHoo, cruise control!! Need to swap some stuff over, sell some stuff, you know.

rbentnail wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 6:18 pm Parked my '07 for a while. B/c I bought a 37K mile '13!! WooHoo, cruise control!! Need to swap some stuff over, sell some stuff, you know.

Awesome. I hope someone warned you that GEN3s blow up if darksided.

Anyways, good for you.

rbentnail wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 6:18 pm Parked my '07 for a while. B/c I bought a 37K mile '13!! WooHoo, cruise control!! Need to swap some stuff over, sell some stuff, you know.

Congrats Russ! I know you’ll be happy with her.

I rode up and down the hwy, playing with the cruise control. Noice!

Got a set of new Bridgestone T32 GTs. Might be awhile before I can report on them.

Did the usual run-around town for the '13: insurance; DMV for title, taxes and tag, etc. Had a nice ride with the cruise control. It's got the stock windshield on it, that's gotta go! Horrible.....

rbentnail wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 5:08 pm Did the usual run-around town for the '13: insurance; DMV for title, taxes and tag, etc. Had a nice ride with the cruise control. It's got the stock windshield on it, that's gotta go! Horrible.....

Go ahead an mail that piece of junk to me, I'll pay for your shipping...

Checked tire pressures and condition. Did a visual of the rest of the bike and went for a nice little ride about 2.5/3 hours. Still taking it slow but it was a nice day.

The Brown Truck dropped off a set of PR4GTs today which I snagged for $300 before sales tax.

I may get 500 more miles on the Shinko Raven 009s.

fontanaman wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:06 pm The Brown Truck dropped off a set of PR4GTs today which I snagged for $300 before sales tax.

I may get 500 more miles on the Shinko Raven 009s.

Really curious as to how long the 009s wore? Others got great life out of 009 so I was suckered by Shinko’s claims for the 016. Worst tires ever. Steered like they were inflated to 25 PSI.

Also curious about handling. I have come to dislike the PR4GT front. But I like the rear. More on that later.

Mounted the 11th front tire on my FJR. Off came PR4GT at a new personal worst 6874 miles for a PR4GT. Will have to post pic of tire later as I haven’t mastered FTP of .HEIC to .jpeg from iPad yet. But here is the completed task before putting tools away.

New tire is a Cycle Gear closeout T30 Evo. For some reason it was harder to mount than past 2 T31GTs I put on a friend’s R1150RT. About 2nd or 3rd (of about 50) tubeless motorcycle tires I have had to fight to get the bead to seal after the tire was on rim. Sprayed beads which were not close to rim edge with lube and water. Bounced the suspected places, hard, no air in tire, which moved the beads enough to seal. Beads didn’t pop until 34 PSI.

Every tubeless car or trailer tire I have mounted gave me trouble inflating. One heavy radial ST trailer tire was so bad I took it to a tire shop. Had spent 3 hours with ratchet straps and 2 air compressors at once, had enough. Tech got good laugh. I was beyond care. Put the wheel on his machine which has a ring of air underneath, tire popped on like it was nothing. Didn’t want anything but slipped him $5.

Rode 132 miles today on new tire. Like it much better than the PR4GT which was steering heavy at the end. Loved the T31GT before the PR4GT all the way to its end at 9500 miles.

N4HHE wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:00 pm

fontanaman wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:06 pm The Brown Truck dropped off a set of PR4GTs today which I snagged for $300 before sales tax.

I may get 500 more miles on the Shinko Raven 009s.

Really curious as to how long the 009s wore? Others got great life out of 009 so I was suckered by Shinko’s claims for the 016. Worst tires ever. Steered like they were inflated to 25 PSI.

Also curious about handling. I have come to dislike the PR4GT front. But I like the rear. More on that later.

Fontanaman abused the 009 in Oregon...I'll let him fill you in with the details!

~G

N4HHE wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:00 pm

fontanaman wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:06 pm The Brown Truck dropped off a set of PR4GTs today which I snagged for $300 before sales tax.

I may get 500 more miles on the Shinko Raven 009s.

Really curious as to how long the 009s wore? Others got great life out of 009 so I was suckered by Shinko’s claims for the 016. Worst tires ever. Steered like they were inflated to 25 PSI.

Also curious about handling. I have come to dislike the PR4GT front. But I like the rear. More on that later.

The Shinko's 009 maybe a soft tire cause the front sidewalls are nearly gone with bad scalloping at 3900 miles. The rear tire has around 1.5/32 of a inch left at the center and I can see in a couple of places the wear bar is starting to wear. Not expecting to get more than 4500 miles on the 009s. I was hoping for 5000-6000 miles - not going to happen.

The Shinko 009 handled very well - I have no complaints about handling. Never road them in the rain.

I ride a lot on chip seal which is hell on tires. Real asphalt pavement is Eastern Washington and NE Oregon a treat not the norm. I read your post and was amazed you got 9k out of the Bridgestones. In over 125k of FJR riding I never got more than 9k out of FJR front tires. The best was the PR2 but the PR2 rear squared off quick and that was in Western Washington where there is more asphalt.

I expect to get 6500 miles on the PR4GT at $300 for a set. I expect to get 4500 on the 009 Shinkos at $170 per set. Prices without sales tax. The cost per 100 miles for those values is Shinko $3.70 vs PR4GT $4.61 or a 22% premium for the PR4GTs. I like the PR4GTs and agree the fronts wear poorly. The FJR is hard on front tires. All in all I am paying a $55 premium for PR4GTs vs the Shinko 009s and not changing the tires as often.

I could have got a set of Dunlop RS3 for $250 and if I got 6500k out of them the cost $3.84/100 miles. I have used the RS3 and I don't have good records of how those performed. I know the RS3 took more effort to install with my No-Mar set up. So I went with the PR4GTs cause they are easy to install and wear well.

Many on the forum use the Bridgestone front and PR4GT in the rear. I had a bad experience mixing tires years ago with a soft rear tire and a harder front tire causing the front tire to skid / chunk in a turn. As I was deep into the lean it scared the heck out of me.

Maybe the lesson out of all this is the inexpensive tire vs expensive tire is a $50 difference so all this tire chatter on the forum is (fill in your own adjective here.)

escapefjrtist wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:15 pm

N4HHE wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:00 pm

fontanaman wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:06 pm The Brown Truck dropped off a set of PR4GTs today which I snagged for $300 before sales tax.

I may get 500 more miles on the Shinko Raven 009s.

Really curious as to how long the 009s wore? Others got great life out of 009 so I was suckered by Shinko’s claims for the 016. Worst tires ever. Steered like they were inflated to 25 PSI.

Also curious about handling. I have come to dislike the PR4GT front. But I like the rear. More on that later.

Fontanaman abused the 009 in Oregon...I'll let him fill you in with the details!

~G

Me abuse tires in NE Oregon! Not me ~G it was the pavement. That chip seal is tough on tires. Nevermind I am willing to lean that FJR into the turns when the conditions allow. It is the damn pavement I tell you.

For the record I got 6784 miles on most recent PR4GT front, 8711 miles on an earlier tire.

10,245 on recent PR4GT rear, 10,943 on another. A friend I ride with exclusively uses PR4 on FJR and typically gets 9,000 front, 11,000 rear. My most recent tire is a statistical outlier.

The T31GT front went 9487. Rear died early of unrepairable leak.

T30 Evo GT front delivered 8030 miles. Rear 7504.

Shinko 016 thankfully only 3593 front, 4755 rear.

As with fontanaman, lots of tarmac (tar and gravel). Not good at avoiding so I can’t really say all tires saw the same distribution of good/bad road.

Today, I removed everything from the bags. I was picking up extra crap over time. So I removed the handful of masks and neck gaiters that were salted through the bags. Earplugs. Redundant insurance cards. Etc.

Put the jump pack and jump pack cables, and Sena charging cable in a different pouch, and managed to find a place for them under the seat. Now only the aerostich pump has to go in a case. Truthfully, it’d probably fit in the glovebox. May try that next.

Trying to get back to baseline and run without a topcase occasionally, and maybe even without any bags once in a while. A juvenile fascination I go through every year when it gets warm.

fontanaman wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:06 pm The Brown Truck dropped off a set of PR4GTs today which I snagged for $300 before sales tax.

I may get 500 more miles on the Shinko Raven 009s.

What did you think you are gonna get out of the Ravens? You have been riding some grippy areas and plenty of curves based upon your pictures.

EDITED due to not reading the rest of the thread first. Thanks for the data. Sorry about not reading until the end. I got pulled away from the computer. Some little dipstick decided to stomp on BBQ packets in the gym that he smuggled in from breakfast. Little turd is on clean up duty.

N4HHE wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:00 pm

fontanaman wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:06 pm The Brown Truck dropped off a set of PR4GTs today which I snagged for $300 before sales tax.

I may get 500 more miles on the Shinko Raven 009s.

Really curious as to how long the 009s wore? Others got great life out of 009 so I was suckered by Shinko’s claims for the 016. Worst tires ever. Steered like they were inflated to 25 PSI.

Also curious about handling. I have come to dislike the PR4GT front. But I like the rear. More on that later.

I had a Verge front, (thats the 016 right?) It did wear quickly. I did abuse it properly in Virginia and Arkansas however. I had no steering issues but it did shred prematurely.