F3 Front tire size question

[German]

I recently installed a pair of 165/55/15 Federal/Formosa tires on the front of my wife's '17 F3. They balanced with minimal weights and fit nicely. Set the tire pressure to 16 psi. At highway speed, the Spyder feels like it wants to dart quite easily. It just feels funny that way. The original factory tires had about 5000 miles on them and they were severely cupped and had almost 2oz of weights on them. They didn't have this strange feeling. Any comments or thoughts on this? This was the only tire I could find in this size other than the factory units. Puzzled

[BLUEKNIGHT911]

I recently installed a pair of 165/55/15 Federal/Formosa tires on the front of my wife's '17 F3. They balanced with minimal weights and fit nicely. Set the tire pressure to 16 psi. At highway speed, the Spyder feels like it wants to dart quite easily. It just feels funny that way. The original factory tires had about 5000 miles on them and they were severely cupped and had almost 2oz of weights on them. They didn't have this strange feeling. Any comments or thoughts on this? This was the only tire I could find in this size other than the factory units. Puzzled

From what you said .... it's not the TIRE .... your alignment is off, I suspect you had Crapenda's on your Spyder .... they have the worst defective rate for any tire I have ever read about .... and 16 psi for any auto tire ( not crapenda's ) would be spot on for your Spyder ..... Mike

[JP58]

Get Lazer alignment. I had same tires on my 15 RTS. No darting.

[Peter Aawen]

I recently installed a pair of 165/55/15 Federal/Formosa tires on the front of my wife's '17 F3. They balanced with minimal weights and fit nicely. Set the tire pressure to 16 psi. At highway speed, the Spyder feels like it wants to dart quite easily. It just feels funny that way. The original factory tires had about 5000 miles on them and they were severely cupped and had almost 2oz of weights on them. They didn't have this strange feeling. Any comments or thoughts on this? This was the only tire I could find in this size other than the factory units. Puzzled

The stated tire size here is incidental & has little to do with anything you are noticing.... But as said, that pressure is going to be very close to the ideal pressure for any auto tire run on the front of the vast majority of Spyders around! (but not for the OE spec Kendas or any equivalent Kenda/Arachnid replacement!) So that's a great start!

Addressing your problems tho, it goes like this - Before you fitted those new tires, you had OE spec tires with limited grip & poor directional stability that just scrubbed out some more as the bike wandered due to the poor wheel alignment!! NOW, after you've fitted tires that have given your Spyder's front end some real grip & directional stability, your front two tires are fighting each other for directional control of where the bike steers as it wanders juuust a little due the bike's poor wheel alignment - hence, all the darting around!

You've fixed the tire part of your overall problem, only now you need to fix the wheel alignment part - and you should do that pretty quickly or you'll shred/scrub out your new tires and get poor life from them before their tread is worn abnormally & your traction/grip is compromised!! I'd get that wheel alignment done within the next couple of hundred miles if at all possible, and certainly get it done within saaay 500 miles; preferably by someone who KNOWS how to do this properly on one of these Spyders - a laser alignment isn't strictly necessary, altho the right laser gear in the hands of a competent operator does make getting the alignment done right a whole lot more likely! Still, an appropriately skilled operator with a pair of alignment sticks & a tape measure could probably do just as good a job, but those operators are becoming scarce.... I'm told it's something to do with their software wearing out - their hardware still functions fine tho!

Ps: getting your alignment set to just a little more than spec (saaayy 2-3mm total toe - IN!) will remove almost any chance of your Spyder still wandering & darting, but you don't want to go too much over that, or you'll scrub the tires & make the steering quite direct, but a bit more'n just a tad harder than it needs to be! When it comes to total toe, there's a fine line between 'enough' and 'too much'!!

[merlot]

everything pete said+
if you have raised your front springs eg"stiffened" your front suspension,you may benefit from returning settings to original
if you havent,then you may benefit from lowering the adjusters ....this will give you negative camber
i have a friend suffering this handling problem and this is what i plan to trry next

hope you get it sorted
https://www.google.com/search?client...hz7sPs_ylsAs35

russ

[German]

Here's the latest. After reading Peter's post and using Russ' search link, my neighbor and I fabricated a simple alignment setup by welding tabs on some square tubing I had laying around to have them parallel with the rims. We measured and found they were toed out about 1/16". We adjusted each control rod 1/2 turn and now have about the same toe in. The handling is golden!!! I will have the alignment checked soon just to be sure at a different dealer than I purchased the machine as they said they aligned it. They lacked enthusiasm when I requested the service.
Thank you Pete and Merlot for the great advice!

[merlot]

thanks for the feed back
1/2 rod on both is a fair amount .....i will give friends bike some more toe in when he brings it tomorrow...ive set him to 3.3mm toe in atm
dont want to give too much tho

[2dogs]

Peter is spot on. If you've never set your toe-in before (on anything) get some help from a friend that has experience at doing that. 2/3mm's is not that much and can be easily undershot or overshot and then you'd back in the same boat again. Good luck.........