Question about tires  By  keikara (Read 1,147 times)

The 130/70-13 tire sidewall is about 1/2 inch taller than the 130/60-13 tire. (making the tire height about 1 & 1/32 inch taller in total) So if the clearance on the front tire is less than 1/2 inch then the fender will need to be moved up. If not, then the tire while it may not be touching the fender, it will be closer. Small pebbles stuck to the tread may stand out far enough that they will scrape or come loose and be forced to roll and grind between the tire and fender making a lot of racket though probably not causing much damage if any at all.

The bike currently uses the same size tire F & R now. I wouldn't think there would be a problem with using the slightly taller tires even though they are being sold as rear tires. It might only be a concern to me if there is something on the current tires now that clearly indicate that one is specifically for the front and the other specific to the rear. Others may have a different point of view though.

And, I use a car tire on the rear and a rear scooter tire on the front of one of my scooters and it works just fine for me. That may or may not disqualify my opinion; depending on your trust in view of my practice. Just adding that caveat 

Who says put it on in reverse rotation for a scooter? For a scooter, it is not necessary nor advisable to put it on "backwards" Some may do that on the big heavy cruisers like Goldwings etc. But for a scooter which is a very light weight vehicle, it is more important to be mounted in normal forward rotation for the purpose of water evacuation. As it is, rear tires do not typically have a central groove around the full circumference of the tire like front tires usually do to aid in water evacuation.... All the more reason to have the grooves of the rear tire tread oriented in the more optimum water evacuating forward rotating direction.

The logic for reverse rotation mounting is that for rear tires, most of the time, force to the tire and its tread comes from acceleration; on the front, from braking only. And so The thinking is that maybe it should be mounted so that it will be oriented to take the greater force of braking as opposed to..... the zero force of just rolling along. (or just barely if using front brakes while rolling the bike backwards) That may be applicable to the big heavy bikes, but not necessarily so for light scooters. Scooter rear tires (all motorbike rear tires for that matter) are designed to take force in both directions; acceleration AND braking. You would think that would mean they were probably built to be pretty robust then....... I would too.

Front tires on bikes typically are often taller, narrower and have less tread depth than rear tires. And they are primarily designed and built to take the forces to the tire and tread in one direction. ie; braking in forward rotation. And that, at about 60%. (there is zero force on acceleration .... it's just freewheeling along.) The rear tire takes 100% of the force during acceleration and about 40% when braking. BUT! Do you really think the rear tire with its deeper tread and being made to take force in both directions would not be able to take a little bit more of the braking force? (like they do sometimes anyway when only the rear brake is used, along with engine braking)

There is WAY lots of safety factor designed into tires..... A rear tire can take it. As I have stated before in a previous posting, I use a rear scooter tire on the front of one of my scooters mounted in normal forward rotation (along with a car tire on the rear) and it all works fine. In fact, that tire up front is going to far exceed the lifetime of a conventional front tire for that scooter. I have plenty of experience with a rear tire properly oriented on the front of one of my scooters. And no problems EVER with hydroplaning. We all slow down for wet pavement anyway right? My advice would be to mount it in proper, normal forward rotation. No need to subject yourself to the real risk of hydroplaning because of misguided worry about how braking might affect a tire that is already over built for the job.

So got my new tires installed today. Bought from bikebandit.com $62.00 each shipped, ordered on Monday one tire delivered on Wednesday, other delivered on Thursday. Got the Michelin city grip 130-70-13, front tire just had to move the rear fender up in the screw slot, rear tire had to deflate to get past the case of the motor, after that went together like a charm.