Pics below. Wondering how yours tires have fared compared to mine? Just back from my trip from FL to the NC mountains where we rode all of Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway, then the Tail of the Dragon many times, and a bunch of other local curvy roads up there, then rode home: 2,020 miles in 8 days.

My stock tires had 3,230 mi on 'em when we left, and the bike was already starting to handle a little weird, kinda 'falling' into turns, & then sometimes wanting to stand straight up when I let pressure off the bars in a turn, typical tire wear stuff, but seemed OK for another 1,500 miles. I was thinking, "Use 'em up & get the new ones put on as soon as I'm back home". Well, for one thing 1,500 mi turned into 2,000. And 2, we rode the heck out of the curvy roads. So the bike's handling got worse and worse and then on the last eve up there I noticed the belt had just come thru on the rear tire ... right at 4,600 miles. Much fewer miles than I would've hoped for, but then I've read that most guys don't usually get very good mileage out of the stock tires.

Now my riding "style" (tee hee) may have caused more wear than it really should've as, rather than riding smoothly thru turns ... I'm not a great turner, so I manhandle the bike thru turns the best I can & then I blast out full throttle, then slam the brakes on at the very last second when entering the next turn. You'll see it for yourself when I post a vid.

Meantime here's what the tires looked like at 4,600 miles. I ended up having to get new tires while I was up there, so technically got 4,800 out of these, but the last few hundred were no fun at all. It rained on the last 2 days, and the leaves have just started falling, so wet curvy mountains roads combined with leaves ... well, no fun. More like a stressful fight to keep the bike upright and on the pavement. Very harsh ride, very jittery and slippery.

As you can see on the front, I'm much harder on left-hand turns :)

How did your stock tires fare?

* Last updated by: extrapolator on 9/13/2015 @ 8:08 AM *

I replaced my front Metzelers at 4800 miles, but replaced the rear tire at about 2000 miles with Shinko hookups and I only get about 1000 miles per Shinko.

I am still using OEM Bridgestone at 5400 miles. Rear is showing some wear, but front still looks OK to me.

* Last updated by: OldMan on 9/13/2015 @ 1:57 PM *

I replaced my factory Metzler rear at 4750 miles and the front at 5100 miles. I went with another set of Metzlers. The condition of my tires was about the same as you show in your pictures. And, like your front, my front showed more wear on the left side than the right. I mentioned that to the shop where I took my wheel for the tire change and he said that he sees the asymmetric wear pattern on the front tire like that all the time. His take on that was it being due to the crown on the road causing just a little bit of needed "to the left" steering correction to compensate. Hence, more wear on the left. It makes sense to me, especially since my turning preference is to the right versus left and I can easily see that preference by the size of the "chicken strips" on my back tire. So, with that and all else being equal, I should see more wear on the right side of my front tire than the left. But no, my wear is like yours, quite a bit more on the left. Anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting.

It sure was pleasant to see how easily a pneumatically powered Coates tire changer does its thing. It was an absolutely effortless event. It brought a smile to my face. There was virtually no chance that my rims would get dinged. Nice. Back in the day (1970's) I was good friends with the local shop here in town and they would let me use their manual Coates machine to change my own tires. Sheesh, it was really a royal pain in the old patootie to do a change. No more of that, thank you very much.

My front Metzlers were cupping with about 5000 miles on them, I have heard a lot of owners
of the OE Metzlers say that, replaced with Pilot Road 4's best thing I ever did !

Better grip, feeling, tire life, etc ... and no cupping

* Last updated by: carabuser on 9/13/2015 @ 2:52 PM *

skewedTotheLeft - Wow, identical mileage

OldMan - Interesting that you have Bridgestones whereas I have (had!) Metzlers.

joegdi - Also interesting, as I thought sure the extra left side wear was due to my preference to left-hand turns. Always been that way, way back to my BMX bicycle days. Never could get as comfortable turning right as left, and it continues to this day

carabuser - You mention Pilot Roads ... that's exactly what I got: Pilot Road 4 GT's. I'm sure almost any new tire would feel better than my worn out tires, but I sure am pleased with these PR4GT's so far

* Last updated by: extrapolator on 9/13/2015 @ 6:58 PM *

2,000 miles out of the rear. 200 HP does that.

Replaced both tires at 2600 miles, rear was not quite to cords but no more than ~500 to that I bet.
Went (as always) with a combo of Pilot Power 3 front, Pilot Road 4 GT rear, had very good luck with that setup on my 2006 ZX14. Fully expect to get ~6K off the rear tire...and then just replace tires as sets. My thought is that I cannot have the front slip at all, whereas the rear can squirm a bit with no problem, but honestly with the PR4s unless I am doing it on purpose, there is no slippage at all.

* Last updated by: timomasalin on 9/14/2015 @ 7:51 PM *

This is mine with 2,500 miles the front looks about the same now she has 3,400 miles showing signs of wear my guess 4,500 they would be fried....

* Last updated by: carinoart09 on 9/15/2015 @ 6:46 AM *

6790 as of this morning on my stock tires so far.
I will have to replace them at the end of the season or at the start of next season.

i got 2200 from oem bridgestone, now on michelin, 200 miles and loads left, well id estimate 1000 on rear

* Last updated by: motero on 9/16/2015 @ 3:03 AM *