Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Whats a Chicken strip? and what do they do?

chicken strips are the outer edges of your tires. They are a guage to see how far over you lean the bike while cornering. some people get their bike over far enough to scrub the little mold hairs off the edges of the tire, while other riders (like myself) tend to still have an inch or so of untouched rubber on the edges when the centre of the tire is completely bagged.

And some of us (like me) have peg-induced chicken strips, meaning the foot pegs hit the pavement long before we're done leaning the bike over!

I've never heard of them before, but the name makes sense if you consider the strip being due to the person was too chicken to lean the bike over that far. Unless they are, as just mentioned, peg induced.

I had to look - I have about 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch on my tires that are unused and I've only scraped the pegs a few times in the parking lot, practicing my slow maneuver turns.

It also depends on the profile of the tyre. On my 1200 Bandit I scrub the rear tyre right to the edge of the side wall (never dragged a peg on it) but the front has about half an inch of rubber that will never touch down.
I must admit that I do look at other bikes tyres to see how hard someone rides, and am just not satisfied until I am chicken stripless myself.

yeah mine are gone...i need new tires.