Bike History, Ancient Rubber & COVID-proof Supply Chains

Ontario gets you to buy a vehicle history when you transfer ownership.  The main reason is to make sure you're not buying something with an existing debt on it, but I like it for the history lesson; you get a good sense of a bike's life from that list of dates and owners.  I'm the third owner of the Tiger.  The first one owned it for most of its life.  The guy I bought it from owned it for a short time (I think it was his first bike) before passing it along to me.

The Fireblade's history also tells a tale.  In July of 1996 it was sold to a guy in West Hill, Ontario (part of Scarborough in the east end of Toronto).  He sold it to McBride Cycle in Toronto (Percy's name is still down as the owner on bikes they brought in then) less than a year later in May of 1997.   McBride Cycle moved it on to a guy in Mississauga two months later in July of 1997.   The previous owner to me bought it in April of 1998 and owned it up until his divorce when he gave it to his ex as part of their separation.  It then sat with her through the divorce until her new boyfriend dropped it off for me last September, 2019.  Timeline wise, the owners of this bike have lasted:

• 10 months
• 2 months (dealer)
• 10 months
• and 21 years, though it looks like it was unused for most of the last decade of those.

I'm the 5th owner of the bike, and if I hold on to it for more than ten months I'll be the second longest owner it has had.  This 23 year old Japanese super model only has twenty-five thousand kilometres on her and sat unused for long enough that the petcock that metres fuel out of the tank failed and flooded the engine, then it sat broken in a garage.


This Honda is a 'supersport' bike with 'hypersport' tires, meaning they're soft, grippy and don't last long.  I once heard a story of a guy who used to drive his supersport bike to twisty roads in his van, ride it hard for a couple of days, and then open up his van and change to new tires using the tire mounting equipment he kept mounted in there.  Heavy handed riders can burn through a set of these types of tires after a single track day.

Lloyd at Mostly Ironheads measured the depth and determined that the 'Blade needed new tires to meet safety requirements.  I've got the 'Blade raised up in the garage at the moment and had a good look at the tires today, and found these:

But the numbers didn't make sense to me because I've never had a bike with tires made before 2000.  Tires after the year 2000 have a four digit code printed on them showing the date of manufacture, so you know if they're getting stale (rubber goes off over time).  If you see a 3507 stamped on your tire after the DOT designation it means they were manufactured on the 35th week of 2007.  But the 'Blade's tires show a 038 on the rear and a 395 on the front.

Pre-2000 tires only had a 3 digit code on them.  The first two are the week and the last one is the year, but you get to guess the decade, which is why they updated it in 2000.  If I'm reading the Fireblade's tires right, the rear was made in the 3rd week of 1998 and the front was made in the 39th week of 1995.  The tire model is a Bridgestone Battlax BT56F, and they were kicking around in the 90s.  It appears the "Blade's tires are well over 20 years old.

Sorting out tires during a pandemic should have been a real headache, but it was another COVID19 supply line success story.  I fired out requests to Two Wheel Motorsports, my local dealer, but they couldn't be bothered to respond.  I also tried to reach out to all the local tire stores and not one had the tech to do motorcycle tires.  I tried other local bike shops, but once again, radio silence.  It's like some people just don't want to make money during this situation.  Perhaps getting handouts from the government is all they need.

The only reply I got was from John at REVCO.CA, an online tire company out near Ottawa.  He was straight up with me, saying that they can usually turn around an order in a matter of hours, but it might take up to a week right now.  What convinced me to spend nearly four hundred bucks with him was his responsiveness and openness, so I ordered the tires.  REVCO outdid themselves, delivering the tires within 48 hours.  Fortunately Lloyd at Mostly Ironheads can install tires, but not balance newer rims (he focuses on heavy metal from the 20th Century with spoked rims, not racing alloy rims).  It wasn't a worry though because Revco also had Counteract balancing beads, which I'm a bid fan of.  I removed the old fashioned balancing weights, installed the beads on the new tires that Lloyd installed on Saturday morning, and the 'Blade feels like it's walking on air, wearing her first new pair of shoes in over two decades.

Motorcycle Tires and When to Change Them

I went for a ride with Jeff the motorcycle Jedi and Wayne, the parts guy from our local dealer, the other week.  It was a 250km round trip out to the shores of Lake Huron and back.  Since we were all on multi-purpose bikes we multi-purposed some of it:

Taking some winding back roads through the countryside we came across such natural wonders as deep mud holes and a lady sun bathing topless on her front lawn; it was a nice ride.

We stopped at one point and Wayne noticed the rear tire on the Tiger wasn't doing very well.  Coming from cars I'm used to using depth gauges on tread to determine a tire's remaining life.  Car tires burn through tread fairly evenly due to equally delivered lateral forces.   Bike tires are undergoing a whole different kind of physics.  You can expect to see fairly even tread wear on a car tire because of those lateral forces.  Bike tires tend to wear from the middle out because the crown of the tire takes the brunt of the wear, especially in flat and straight South Western Ontario.

Wayne pointed out tears down the middle of the rear tire on the Tiger that I hadn't even thought to look for.  As you can see, the tread on the edges of the tire is still quite deep, but the wear in the centre is so deep it's turning up the metal bands in the tires:

Those are some expensive  pieces of wire poking through...

This prompted a call to my local dealer to try and get the bike in - they told me it's over a month wait!  I offered to remove the tires and they said they'd try and squeeze them in.  Fortunately it rained a flood the next couple of days and with some cancellations I got a call a day later saying the tires were done.

The bill was a staggering six hundred and ninety three dollars - for two motorcycle tires on rims that had been removed from the bike (so minimal shop work involved).  I'm looking over the bill now.  Looking up the Michelin Anakees I purchased online, the dealer prices aren't crazy - about twenty bucks more than the online cost for the front and fifteen bucks more for the rear.  There is a cost associated with a local dealer keeping this sort of thing in stock and I've got no problem with that.  With that being the case these two tires came to a staggering five hundred bucks.  By comparison, Corvette ZR1 Michelin tires - very high tech, huge rubber for a faster than light car - cost about three hundred bucks a pop (and include road hazard warranty).  Motorcycle tires must be made out of platinum and unicorn horns - they are wickedly expensive!

The dealer prices on labour were also perfectly reasonable - about a hundred bucks to install and balance both new tires (with inner tubes).  So the lesson learned here is that motorcycle tires are wickedly expensive.  Even with perfectly reasonable labour costs at my local dealer I'm still out nearly seven hundred bucks for a set of new tires.

Fortunately the Anakees seem to be a very long wearing tire, so hopefully I won't be looking to replace them again for a while.  They ride great - much quieter than the Metzelers that they replaced, and the grip in dry has been very trust inducing.  They might have cost me  a mint, but they look like they might be worth it.

NOTES
Anakee Review:  it's a road biased ADV tire (I'm ok with that - they feel great), it is long lasting, and it can handle light off road work, which is all I'd do on the big Tiger anyway.

US prices are marginally better... $336 for the tires (instead of $500+ in Canada).  $336US is about $461CDN - and that's an online price vs. a dealer price.  The online Canadian price is only a couple of bucks different.

Looking up prices in the US - most dealers will do a tire change for $20 a wheel if the wheels are off (that's $55CDN)

Lessons Learned From Rims, Tires & DIY

So, the rims are back from Fireball Coatings.  They look fantastic, but I'm a bit baffled by the process.  Mark, the owner, suggested getting candy coated gold, though I'd initially said I'd just go for the plain gold.  After being convinced of the upgrade the process took longer than expected (about 20 days instead of a week) because he was out of the product needed to do it.  Communication wasn't a strong point during this wait.

I was worried about tolerances changing on the inside of the rims, but I was assured that they  would be masked off.  The end result has a fair bit of over-spray, which isn't easy to clean up (which I guess bodes well for the rims themselves in regular wear and tear use).  With a Dremel I've been able to clean up the over-spray and I've begun to rebuild the rims for re-installation.

The final bafflement came when Mark said that black bits dropped into the process and there are minor imperfections as a result.  They are barely visible, but his explanation was that no one does gold candy coat on rims.  This begs the question, why up-sell me on them then?  All the strangeness aside, they do look fantastic, and I'm looking forward to seeing them back on the bike again.  The final cost to coat two rims was just over $300 Canadian taxes in (or about a dollar fifty US).

I'm not sure what I'd do differently next time as I don't have much experience with industrial coatings.  I think I'll give Fireball another go in the future though, just not if I'm on a tight timeline.  I imagine less finicky (ie: rims without a shaft drive hub on them) parts would be less of a headache.  They had a coated motorcycle frame on the floor at the shop that looked spectacular.  Mark figures he can coat all the basic parts of a bike (frame, swing arm, exposed bits and pieces) for about $1000.

Buy 'em online and you're looking at a lot of money for tires
unseen and possible long on the rack.

The tire portion of the process was handled by Two Wheel Motorsport just north of Guelph on Highway 6.  It's my first time doing motorcycle tires (everything previous was well rubbered when I got it and sold safetied as is).  What I've learned is that motorcycle tires are expensive!  And evidently wear out much sooner than car tires (odd considering how they are supporting much less weight on lower mileage).

The tires from the dealer were about forty bucks more per tire than online, but you're buying them on the internet sight unseen, and they might be cheap because they're stale.

I got the benefit of very experienced Concours owners in the parts department helping with tire choices rather than depending on the generic tire size finder online.  No one seems to support the OEM Dunlops that originally came with the bike twenty two years ago, so selecting ZG1000 tires is about preferences rather than manufacturer's recommendations.

The tire pricelist from the Toronto
Motorcycle Show - 2 Wheel was
cheaper, and could get the weird
size for my Concourse.

I was going to go with Bridgestones, but when a guy with over a million miles ridden (!) suggests the Michelins if you want good handling and amazing mileage, I didn't ignore him. 

All was well until I got the $600 bill... for two tires!  I think my last car change was 4 Yokohamas for the Mazda2, and it cost $650 and included balancing and installation.  Like I said, bike tires are expensive!  It was $35 to install each tire - ninety nine and change for the work.  I think I got charged for tire disposal even though the rims were bare, and even though I asked for a 90° valve stem on the back I didn't get one (though I don't think I was charged for it).

I thought maybe buying tires at the Bike Show would save money, but the prices listed weren't as good as the sale prices offered over the desk at Two Wheel, and they didn't have the weird sizes I need for the Concours anyway, so that isn't a way out.

I used to be a tire guy at Canadian Tire when I'd just gotten out of high school.  I know my way around the tools involved.  In the future I think I'm going to try and get tires and bits and pieces online and then do the install myself.  I'm going to install balancing beads on my current tires.  If they work as well as advertised, balancing (the only part that requires expensive machinery) won't be necessary.  When I do the tires on the XS1100 I'll do them in-house and see how it goes.

Speaking of in-house, the last frustration was removing the bearings.  I took them in to school figuring that the autoshop had a press and could take them out easily.  They sat there for a week before I finally took them home and knocked out the bearings in ten minutes.  While there for the week they managed to lose my bearing retaining clips and the front bearing spacer as well, so I'm having to spend another $20 at the dealer replacing parts they lost.  The moral of this story?  Do the work yourself.  You learn more by doing it, and you're less likely to lose parts you need to put the thing back together again.

The missing bits and pieces should be in this week, I should have the bike back on its feet by this weekend.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks with its new kicks on.


Parts Costing

                      TIRES                            Online      Dealership   Difference
Michelin Commander II 150/80/16       $174.45        $213.79        $39.34
Michelin Commander II 130/70/18       $208.00        $244.54        $36.54
                                                                                                 --------
                                                      money saved buying online   $75.88
                                                      + gas & time going to and from the dealer (online delivery is free)

Dealer parts total:  $458.33+$4 (shop supplies) = $462.33 (don't see any charge for the valves)
Online order total: $442.61 (including a 90° rear valve & a front valve)

Labour Costing

Dealership installation of two tires (with new valve stems, no balancing, no disposal - though they charged me for that anyway):  $99

How to change your own tires.