Tires And Age

[Guest daemontrym]

I ride a 1995 VFR750F currently wearing a set of PR2's that I bought in 2010. Due to going back to school and work obligations I haven't had a good opportunity to ride her as
often as I would've liked.

My question is when do you draw the line on a set of older tires that are in otherwise good shape? The tires are about half worn, I have a tiny bit of cupping, and there is no cracking on the side walls or the tread.

The reason I ask is because I bought the vfr in 2008 when I got out of the Army and put a set of Continental Road Attacks on her. Long story short 9 months later I am involuntarily
reactivated to deploy to Iraq again and the bike sat for about 18 months. I tires had maybe 1k on them when I put the VFR away in storage in a temp controlled garage when my
family moved to AZ while I was deployed. After riding for a couple months the side walls and tread were cracked real bad like a dry rotted car tire. So thats when I bought the PR2's based on the recommendations of this board.

[Switchblade]

Run'em but kept eye on them . the thing about tires like that is when they start to go they go fast ..

[Guest]

A few threads below this one is one on "traction loss with age" curve. There you will find a range of opinions. The consensus is that newer is always better and unless you ride very conservatively you should bite the bullet and get new tires if yours are more than even two years old. But, no one actually came up with other than anecdotal evidence that old is inadequate. So, it is kind of a crap shoot as to what to do. My personal thought on the matter is that If you are under 50 and not pinching every possible penny, get new ones.

I'll throw in the point that Shinko radials, both the 005 Advance and 009 Raven are very affordable and have generally excellent user reviews despite not being chosen by many VFR riders in the "Best tire poll."