IdahoMtnSpyder
Active member
As you can see in this photo my mud flap does a great job of keeping me from casually observing my rear tire.

The other day at a gathering of Spyder owners some of us got to talking rear tires so I pulled up the mud flap to show him my General Altimax RT43. Oh, oh, this is what we saw!

The center tread is worn down somewhat more than the outer tread. According to the General web site when new the tire had 11/32", or 0.344" tread depth. This morning the center tread depth is down to about 0.040" and the outer tread depth about 0.075". I used a caliper hence the decimal numbers! The tire has about 16,500 miles on it. I ride one up all the time, mostly at 70 mph and over. I've been running about 25 psi in the tire. This morning when I checked it it was about 22 psi. I'm going to say the tire pressure has been between 22 and 25 psi the entire time I've been running it. Actually I don't recall seeing it less than 23 when I've checked it before.
Obviously I should have been looking at it every once in awhile so that I would have been keeping tabs on the wear rate across the tire. If I had done that, and if I had paid attention to Mike's (Blueknight 911) admonitions about rear tire pressure in car tires, I probably would have lowered the pressure to something like 20 to 21 psi. That's about the max that Mike has repeatedly said we should run at.
I'm going to drop it down to about 18 psi for the rest of the riding season, which is only about 2 more months and maybe 3000 miles to push the wear rate to the outside. I'll replace it this winter. If the wear rate increases on the outside compared to the center then that will substantiate our understanding that tire pressure makes a difference with car tires much more so than with the OEM Kendas. I'll let you know in few months what it looks like when I replace it.

The other day at a gathering of Spyder owners some of us got to talking rear tires so I pulled up the mud flap to show him my General Altimax RT43. Oh, oh, this is what we saw!

The center tread is worn down somewhat more than the outer tread. According to the General web site when new the tire had 11/32", or 0.344" tread depth. This morning the center tread depth is down to about 0.040" and the outer tread depth about 0.075". I used a caliper hence the decimal numbers! The tire has about 16,500 miles on it. I ride one up all the time, mostly at 70 mph and over. I've been running about 25 psi in the tire. This morning when I checked it it was about 22 psi. I'm going to say the tire pressure has been between 22 and 25 psi the entire time I've been running it. Actually I don't recall seeing it less than 23 when I've checked it before.
Obviously I should have been looking at it every once in awhile so that I would have been keeping tabs on the wear rate across the tire. If I had done that, and if I had paid attention to Mike's (Blueknight 911) admonitions about rear tire pressure in car tires, I probably would have lowered the pressure to something like 20 to 21 psi. That's about the max that Mike has repeatedly said we should run at.
I'm going to drop it down to about 18 psi for the rest of the riding season, which is only about 2 more months and maybe 3000 miles to push the wear rate to the outside. I'll replace it this winter. If the wear rate increases on the outside compared to the center then that will substantiate our understanding that tire pressure makes a difference with car tires much more so than with the OEM Kendas. I'll let you know in few months what it looks like when I replace it.
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