New Tyres

[gerryh]

Just about to buy a new set of tyres for my 14 F800 GS, was thinking along the lines of Heinadau K60 scout, Mitas E0-7 or TKC 70. 50/50 tyre at this stage
mainly used on sealed and gravel/hard packed forest trails at the moment, looking at doing the off road course at Kirup this year so they might get to see a
bit of sand also. Just looking for a bit of advice or other peoples experiences with different brands.

Gerry

[jono]

Had Mitas E09's great grip but short life +|- 4000km
Heidenau K60 good grip good long life span 12000+ but get quite noisy on bitumen
Reports of Mitas E07 somewhere in the middle of the 2 above but had issues with delamination a while back, hopefully solved now.
Currently using Tkc front ( very happy) Bridgestone rear (forget code) wearing fast

[Bozo]

Got over 37,000 from my K60 Scout front and 24,000 on the rear.

A very tough tyre and it was noisy and went through a vibration as you accelerate but worked well for me on the 1200 GS

Even so I replaced them with K60 Scouts

[bully1]

if you are doing the riding course I recommend putting new tyres on just before the course, and tyres with grip. After just having done Desert Raid on an F800, I would recommend something along the lines of a Pirelli MT21 on the front and a Dunlop 606 on the rear ( for the course ) the Heidenau's are great all round tyres for the rest of your riding. It would be a shame to pay out the money for the course and not be able to get the best out of your bike because of grip limitations.

[profoundly_disturbed]

JonO and I did the Kirup Level II last year, I'd say a competent rider could do pretty much all the sections there with road tyres. There is no sand, we had to ride into Kirup itself to find some, it was deep, ask JonO.

I believe all the comments here are from 1200 owners/riders (sans Bully!). I've been running Metzler Karoo 2 on my F800GSA, but I've just worn out the first rear tyre on set of Karoo 3, the front is fine, and for what it's worth, that's what I'm putting back on.

The Karoo 3 went on last year just before the BMW training/Tassie Safari, so all up about 8,000kms over a range of terrain, always off bitumen where possible. Only one shortcoming I found with their capabilities, the dope that wears them out.

[brian/5]

For general information I get totally different tyre life between bikes with the Heinadau K60 scouts. The R1200GS is much slower wearing. Not quite as good as Bozo's figures but over 22,000 rear and 30000 front. With the F650GS ( single ) only got about 15000 kms out of a rear K60. Not enough time on the F650 front to give any indication on wear.

You would expect the bigger bike to wear them out faster but not so. The reason I suspect is the tread pattern. The tyres on the R1200 have a continuous centre which would make the tread much firmer. The F650 ones have gaps in the centre, much more like a knobbly.

Brian