:agree: That's true, I still run Kumho's (@ 20psi & even lower!) for their great balance between traction and longevity on our 'fairly hard on tires' Aussie roads, BUT, I realise that they are a compromise tire (& I'd like to think I've conveyed that to others too!) They definitely ARE NOT 'the greatest' when it comes to traction if you compare them with some of the 'ultimate traction tires' available, but at the correct pressure for the load & your ryding style & demands, they are certainly Waaaaayyyyy better than the Kendas in any condition, wet or dry!! And yet they give their 'significantly improved over Kenda' traction AND they give us significantly better tire longevity!! Maybe they are not the greatest tires available for long lasting wear either, but they do that pretty well AND they also give us this significantly better than Kenda traction - well really, there's no 'maybe' about it - there ARE other tires that will wear/last significantly longer, but they generally achieve that by providing appalling traction regardless of the pressure you run them at!! And yes, like i said earlier, there ARE other tires out there that provide better traction, but they generally do that at some cost to longevity, especially on our hot, long, and relatively coarse Aussie road surfaces!! :shocked:
So, for my own Spyder & ryding, I chose (& recommend for ryders with similar loads & requirements to me) the Kumhos as a tire that provides a pretty good balance between long tire wear/life AND pretty reasonable traction throughout that life IF you run them at the right pressures for your load & ryding style/needs! I & others have also made suggestions as to what that pressure might be & I've even explained how to arrive at it, but it's up to you to make some effort on your own behalf to do that! However, back to Kumhos, at the right pressure for the load on them, they work pretty damn well, much better than the Kendas, in BOTH ASPECTS - tire life & traction! But I will agree that if you want traction & couldn't give a fig about how long the tire lasts, the Kumhos aren't going to be high on your list! And if you want tire life but don't really care too much about traction on both wet and dry road surfaces, there are probably better choices than the Kumho out there for you as well!! There will be tires that excel in providing traction on dry roads, but they often do that at the cost of piss poor traction on the mildest of damp roads and abysmal tire life! Similarly, there are tires that provide astounding levels of grip on the wettest of roads, but they generally scrub out before your eyes the moment the road dries out, and even on wet roads, they rarely have a great life expectancy! But if you are prepared to put in a little effort working out what the correct pressure for YOU & your load & ryding style/needs is and you want a tire that works pretty well on both wet and dry roads if not pretty much all conditions as well as giving a reasonable tire life while doing all that, then you could do a lot worse than choosing a Kumho! But I bet you won't find too many that work just as well in all conditions and still give you a reasonable tire life! :thumbup:
Running at close to the right pressures, Kumhos are a pretty reasonable all rounder. There ARE other tires out there that others may have recommended that do this equally as well, Kumhos aren't alone in producing good 'compromise' tires; there might even be tires that suit YOU and your loads & ryding style & needs better in SOME conditions, or there might be others that are less sensitive to pressure requirements, altho they'd certainly work better again if they did get run at the optimum pressure for them; and if you know that you NEVER drive on even just a damp road, there have been a couple of tires that've been recommended here &/or in this thread that will do that well - but they generally don't provide that level of grip on dry roads &/or last as long on a mix of roads & conditions. Yeah, there are also tires that work better in the wet too - but they generally don't provide that level of grip on dry roads AND achieve a reasonable tire life, nor do they usually do so well when subjected to a mix of roads & conditions either! And like I mentioned above, there are even other pretty reasonably well suited to the broad range of potential conditions with a reasonable tire life tires available as well.
So, by now you must be aware that there are a few people here who have recommended tires that do work pretty well across the range of conditions most of you are likely to meet; some have qualified their recommendations as being particularly good re traction on dry roads; some just on traction wet or dry regardless of tire life; some on tire life &/or cost; some have made recommendations regardless of what pressure you run them at; some qualify their recommendations on you making an effort to work out and run the correct pressure for your load &/or ryding style/needs; some of us even recommend tires based on better tire life and all round traction on a variety or a specific type of road surface; but the THINGS linking ALL these recommendations together is that invariably, they are Passenger/car tires and that they are WAAAAY BETTER than the OE Kendas across the board in terms of ride, handling, grip, and tire life, even if that may require dropping your chosen tire pressure a little or a lottle!
And you, the reader of all this, get to take any info you may have gleaned from it all away & do with it as you will, YOU are the only one who knows exactly what you want to feel in your ryde & how you want your tires to behave, and it's a vast subject, altho I would like to think that this may have helped some get a better handle on it all, even if just a little! Enjoy! :thumbup:
