Motorcycle Safety & Driveability: Tires, michelin pilot, oil crayon

Question
Hi, I have a 2003 Suzuki Volusia. My front tire is a IRC 130/90-16. I want to replace it with a raised white letter tire made by Bridgestone. The only RWL tire Bridgestone offers in that size is listed for the rear. The specs. on the two tires are almost identical. I would like to know what would be the difference between a rear and front tire that seems to be the same size. If it is the tread pattern I've seen both front and rear tires before that have the exact same patterns. Your help will be much appreciated. Thanks Mark

Answer
That is a toughie. I can only speculate on this one. I personally would not run a tire labeled as a "rear" on a front, or vice versa.

I am going to assume you already have the same type of Bridgestone on the back, or plan to. It's not advisable to mix and match makes and models of tires front to rear. They should both be the same, for example, both Bridgestone BT014s, Michelin Pilot Sports, Dunlop 208s, etc.

If the tire size is the same, it _should_ work okay. But there's probably a reason they're labeled front and rear.

Or think about it this way, it is possible that tire manufacturers who make radial tires construct front and rears differently. The rear has to generally carry more weight than the front, so I'd guess that a rear tire is not as flexible as a front. The front carries less weight but does a lot of twisting side to side, so I'm guessing it's more flexible, but it could be less, or a different kind of flexible. The majority of the forces applied to a rear tire are driving forces (acceleration) and side (cornering) forces, whereas for a front it's braking forces and cornering forces. They may also shed water differently, as the front is the one that clears the track in which the rear follows.

If you are just trying to snazz up the looks of your sidewalls, I have used some sort of white oil crayon type of thing, a tire marker it might have been called, to "color in" parts of the lettering. You may have to reapply the color every month or so, but then you can use any tires you want and still have the sweet white lettering.

Hope that helps. I really don't know how to answer your question.

Pat