Yuku free message boards

Marman,

I have run the D206F Dunlop front tire with the Dunlop Elite 3, the Dunlop Elite, the Bridgestone Excedra 702, the stock Dunlop D206 and the Metzeler ME880. I have not had squirrelly handling wet or dry with three exceptions.

The first exception is after 9000 miles the steel belt in the Metzeler ME880 was so pronounced that when I leaned left or right over the abrupt edge of the worn 3" wide flat track in the center of the tread my T no longer tracked smoothly around the turn. It was a little squirrelly until I leaned farther over, beyond that edge caused by the worn tread and the embedded steel belt.

The second exception was my fault. Last September I gave a hard input to the right handlebar grip as I was reacting to a perceived obstruction in the road. The result was my rear Elite 3 slid about 2 feet sideways (to the left), but did straighten-out and was tracking true just a few feet after that. It was a good testament to how stable the T and the Elite 3 are under extreme conditions.

The third exception was also my fault. It happened before I knew the important of checking the off-center wear bars. Having noted that I had plenty of center tread left I thought I was good-to-go. However, after leaning large through hundreds of miles of tight turns in northern Georgia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee during our Third Annual T Rally, my front Dunlop D206F was worn almost bare left and right of center. Unfortunately for me, Dave/NewTRider and I ran into some hard, cold ran that October night in northern Kentucky. Due to the squirrelly behavior of the well-worn front tire I was forced to slow down to 10 to 15 mph under the speed limit to keep from sliding more than 1" to 4" sideways from time-to-time. I won't do that again. Now I always check the wear bars in the centers of the center groove and all the side tread grooves. The last three front tires I have replaced have all had left-of-center tread wear-out first.