nichtubermax
Understanding tire wear Q:
By George Mangicaro #136221 and Wes Fleming #87301
Why does my 2005 K 1200 LT eat up rear tires?
-Matthew M. via email
shares a number of characteristics with the K 1200 RS, including its torque rating of 85 foot-pounds. Torque is what gets you up to speed from a dead stop. If you jump on that throttle, you’re going to wear out more rear tires than front ones. It also depends on what you’re
A:
doing with your LT. If you’re pulling a trailer and all three cases are packed to the max with gold bars while your partner hangs out on the rear seat and has their pockets full of depleted uranium rods, you could be over- loading the rear tire and causing it to wear out prematurely. As a side note, overloading your bike like this could also damage your final drive; in other words, it’s important to pay attention to BMW’s max load specification. Your bike’s “wet weight” (all fluids on board) is about 860 pounds and BMW says the GVW is 1,323 pounds, leaving you a load capacity—which includes you and your passenger—of 463 pounds. Exceeding that amount significantly can damage compo- nents, including the tires, which have their own load ratings. Without getting into a discussion
about tire preferences, you should purchase a tire that is rated for your motorcycle and application. This seems like an obvious thing to say, but there’s a difference between “I heard these tires are great” and “This
Even though it looks and acts like a luxury touring machine, your ’05 LT
Look at your tire’s sidewall to get important information, such as max load ratings. On this Metzeler ME880, which many LT riders use, you can see it is rated for 963 pounds at 50 PSI. Most riders don’t inflate their tires to 50 PSI, but how PSI affects load rating is a conversation for another time.
tire is rated for an 800-pound load.” Pur- chasing off-brand tires isn’t a great way to save money, largely because you end up replacing them more often than high qual- ity (and more expensive) tires. In the long run, you’re likely to come out even in rub- ber costs, but you’re likely to install (or paying to have installed) more of the cheap tires, which eliminates any perceived sav- ings on parts costs. The tire that’s appropriate for a sport
bike isn’t appropriate for a touring bike even if the wheel sizes are the same. It’s the application that is the determining factor, not the size.
Q:
George, I'm surprised at your response to Doug's question in the January 2017 issue.
Doug mentioned that the bike had ABS and that they had "blown out the ABS module," but you made no mention of the ABS module in your response. I know nothing of motorcycle ABS; how- ever, ABS modules in automobiles include a pump that returns brake fluid released to control braking pressure into the pressurized system. That keeps the brake pedal from dropping out from under the driver's foot as a result of ABS activation. Could it not be that something in the
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BMW OWNERS NEWS March 2017
TECH
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