Tire Lifespan

[Sven]

From reading through several of the threads, it appears that there is a lot of variation in tire lifespan.   Motorcycle tires seem to be a bit of a rip-off, compared to the price for car tires, the warrenties on car tires, and the advertised lifespan of car tires.

Overall, it looks like 10-12K miles is normal unless you are burning them up at the track or doing a lot more agressive riding.  I replaced my front tire this year at about 10K miles (Pilot Road, which felt soooo good, 2,700 miles later, still liking it).  My rear tire is a Bridgestone BT56 which has suddenly started acting like it needs to be replaced at about 12K+ miles.  (Seemed OK until YESTERDAY!)  (I replaced the back tire twice in the 1st 500 miles on the bike due to "runnin' over things".)
 
I will probably go with the Pilot Road on the back as well.  I like the marks for wet riding and I like the all-over tread...that just seems right, compared to tires with no center tread, like the BT56!

I notice a lot of you are running Metzeler, which is a brand I know nothing about.

I do a lot of commuting (which means stopping a lot) and the weekend pleasure rides are not very aggressive.

So I don't really have a question, just curious what others' experiences have been on the frequency of tire replacement.  Although brand preferences have been discussed in the past, feel free to share any new thoughts on that as well.

[Red01]

The Metz Z6 is a popular choce, but if you like tires to have tread in the middle (I do, too), then it may not be for you.

I've been running the Pilot Roads and been happy with them. I got 10K out of my first rear and 15K out of the front. Both were replaced with Pilot Roads. I had Bridgestones on before that. A BT010 front and BT020 rear. They lasted 10K. I felt the handling was similar, maybe just a hair better, at least up until the front started to cup at ~9K.

One reason bike tires cost more is because of the much smaller volume compared to the car market. Even sport-touring tires are more comparable to car performance tires - which aren't cheap either. They don't las t as long as car tires because of the softer compounds used as well as the shear amount of power put thru their small contact patch.

[Russtang]

First thing I thought when I started researching tires was "$250 for 8-10,000 miles?  That's cheap!".

The tires I run on my cobra run about $1000 a set and I get about the same mileage.  I could get twice the mileage for around $1200, but driving wouldn't be nearly as much fun. I guess "expensive" is all relative.

[jfudo]

I suspect that even the longest wearing motorcycle touring tire is much softer than any $200 or less car tire.  If you look at the prices of car tires, the price goes up with softness, radius, and brand-name.  

I also have the opionion that a lot more technology goes into bike tires, as well as careful manufacturing.  A defective tire can end up costing them a lot of money.  Add into that the fact that they need to develop two different tires for each bike, then only sell 1 of each for each bike, and you start to pay more for R&D than you would for car tires that sell 2,000,000 copies.