Total Motorcycle Community Forums

BuzZz wrote:Some bikes eat only one side of the tire(Valkeries are known for this) but no one has come up with a satisfactory answer as to why.

Mine was cupped severely on the left side only at 10,000 miles. Again, it's due to the left side of your tire having roughly twice the mileage as the right. Check out any intersection and you'll see that a left turn at said intersection is about twice the distance as a right turn, and even further at a multi-lane intersection. Coupled with the fact that most riders take left-hand curves faster than right-hand curves (better visibility around the curve and a ditch to contend with if you low-side, as opposed to an oncoming car) and there's your answer to the one-sided wear conundrum.

Hmmm. I've got the same bike and I've never had cupping that went all the way to the water channels. That sounds pretty severe. I changed out my last front tire (12K miles on it) and it had slightly more wear on the left side (probably due to Zoo's observation about left turns), but not nearly as much as the original poster describes.

Since you don't know how the bike was ridden or maintained before you got it, it would be hard to tell what caused the problem. I'm betting on underinflation. That seems to be a very common problem with bikes that are not ridden regularly. I'd just swap out the tire and keep an eye on the new one.

I get the reasoning your useing Zoo, and many others share your opinion, including me for awhile, but many others have noticed the same wear patterns on the same bikes ridden in countries who use the wrong side of the road, and variations of the left/right wear vs side of the road vs type of known tire-eating bike. Some models eat the leftside, some the rightside, some change within models depending on the country, some don't. It's a much more cloudy situation than it first appears. All I can dertermine is that there is no one explaination that accounts for all the various bike specific patterns.