What are knobblies REALLY like on-road?
 

When I bought my XTR I thought it would be used just as a road bike, so I stuck some new Scorpion Trails on it and all was good.

Now, a KTM EXC-owning friend has convinced me to hit some simple trails with him, so I've ordered up a set of TKC80s. I'm interested though in the reality of such tyres on a bike that is used on road too.

I know they're meant to wear quicker, and to be noisier, but really I'm interested in safety. Is the grip really that much less in normal riding? I'm not a racer - I didn't even manage to get my knee down on three trackdays!! So I'm no hooligan, but I don't know whether I should be pootling around as if I'm riding on snow, or whether the reduction of grip is insignificant if the pegs aren't scraping.

Am I turning my bike into a death trap? :107: :D

Yep completly agree i have them fitted on a spare set of 17 inch x wheels and they realy are amazing . At first they felt strange and the bike felt like it all ways wanted to self center the handle bars and when cornering it felt strange could be described as slipping but you arnt it just feels diffrent as the shape of the tyre is diffrent to the road tyres i was on before. Within a week i went drom been scared going and creeping round roundabouts to commuting 2 up at 1 am in a morning doing 80MPH! through the citt and all its roundabouts . The realy are truely amazing on wet tarmac and dry tarmac

Yesterday i went from a set of scorpian trails to K60 scouts..so i can give you some first hand knowledge.

The scorpian trails on my tenere were fab...so good in the wet and dry.

When i first rode on the K60's i stopepd straight away as i thought the rea wheel was coming off. But it wasn't!

The front end feels heavy to turn now and felt like it would give out in every corner.

The rear moved all over the place and made the bike feel very unstable above 50 mph.

With the scorpian trails it's grip all the time but not much feel...the K60's give a lot of feedback and you can feel the grip before it is about to go.

The roads yesterday and today were wet, icy and not much fun in any way.

But it's not all bad....i had 30 mins in the mud and WOW...!!!!

So back to the road...i was running the sam PSI as the trails....it felt like i was riding across marbles al the time. So i have dropped them both a few PSI..not much..just a 2 second burst of air...and now it's so much better.

I have been told that K60's can take up to 1k to scrub in so i'm going to work at that...200 miles down already.

I've not used TKC's but they will feel simliar to my K60's i bet.

Expect them to feel very different...even broken...mess about with the PSI in both tyres.

It's early days for mine but i think they will be good in a bit.

Hope this helps.

Mike

At various times I have had TKC 80's on both my BMW 1200 GS and my Yamaha 660 Tenere.

Yes, they are surprisingly good for a knobbly tyre, but no way would I agree that they are as good as a more road biased tyre.

In the dry OK, but in the wet they WILL lock up and slide more easily.

The knobbles also give more vibration at speed and are really only happy at certain lean angles (what feels like steps of 10 degrees).

Slow down a bit, don't brake or lean as hard. Ride accordingly and they are fine, but it is physically impossible for them to be as good as a decent road tyre.

.... and of course if you venture off road they beat the road tyre hands down :-)

I second that Do i ride slower ? No yes they will lock if you snatch the brake hard like youre trying to make them lock under normal hard breaking there fine . The only vibration i get is upto 8 mph as youre dropping bettween the knobs at very slow speed. And very ocatiinaly u can spin the ass up comning off a roudabout but when i chnaged to knobs for winter i was scared. But found out there pretty amazing cosidering the amount of tims people tell you how bad they are on wet tarmac

^I'd say that's a fair assessment.

TKCs are better on the road than they have any right to be, given their design.

The only vibrations I notice with TKCs are at very low speeds (like walking pace), where you can feel the transfer between block and gap. However, as soon as speed increases it totally disappears.

The wear rate of the rear is indeed a PITA, the only thing that's spoils an otherwise perfect tyre for the XT.

I once tried a rear K60 Scout (with TKC front) in the quest for greater mileage, but IMHO the K60 is not even close to the TKC in terms of grip and handling on the road, and not as good off piste either, but it did last nearly three times as long!

Thanks guys for all the feedback. I feel a bit reassured, although still think I'm going to ride home at 10mph! :D

The tyres are in stock as of today, so I'll post back early next week with my opinion!.

could i see teh TKC 80`s on the X wheels please.. on the bike..i saw it before but cant find it now...cheers

Got the tyres on on Saturday and rode home very gingerly in the rain. I've only done a few miles yet, but it was really weird how quickly the front dropped when turning at all. Not a problem though. I'll post back once they're scrubbed in, and when I've taken them down a muddy lane!

Here are a few pics. I think the bike looks much meaner with "proper" tyres! :D

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-j...2/IMAG0684.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-C...0/IMAG0685.jpg

Bike looks good. :thumbsup:

The falling over sensation is normal. Some people say you get used to it (which you do to a degree), but I'm convinced that it's more the case that as the rear starts to square off it provides some resistance to the bike rolling over so quickly and suddenly. When you get round to changing the rear (which won't be long!), keeping the existing front (one front for every two rears), the falling over sensation will return again and then subside after a few hundred miles.