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Re: Drop in Dunlop K555 mileage
Written by David on 11/4/2015 at 08:43 pm

I asked my son where he got the information about tire chemicals being banned. It turns out it was not ADV, but rather a friend who is a engineer that works for a company that makes water jet cutting equipment. Apparently he was working on a project with an engineer that works for a tire company. I'll try to talk to his friend and see if I can get more specific information. I would suspect that it was an antioxidant, although it may have been a solvent that is used to keep the rubber soft. Racers use stuff like toluene to soften the tread of their tires, but the effect is temperary because the toluene evaporates. There may be something similar that has been used in new tires that is less volitile.

Another posibility for our observed change in tread wear is a change in the filler used in the rubber. Traditionally tread rubber has been about 50% carbon black. More recently tire companies have been replacing some of the carbon with silica, to reduce rolling resistance, in a effort to reduce fuel consumption. Don't know if this change has occurred with motorcycle tires, but one of the problems with some of the tires using silica has been reduced traction and tire life. Recently, advances in silica chemistry have reportedly allowed silica loaded tires to actually have improved traction and longer tread life, so our tires could be anywhere in this chain of development.

Leland suggested that a change in the country of manufacture might be responsible for poor wear and Metzler rear tire chunking. I was correct that the rear I mounted the other day was made in Germany, but my front, purchased at the same time about 2 years ago was made in Brazil. I'm assuming the the Metzlers that chunked were more than 2 years old and so were probably made in Germany. I have yet to put the rear Metzler on my bike as I bought an extra wheel and have been riding on a BFG car tire, but so far the Brazilian tire has been wonderful.