• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Another tire thread....lets talk about road biased options for the Terra

TerraCzar said:
I'm just over 8000 miles, and I am going to give the Metzeler Karoo 3 a try.
Click to expand...

Seriously? 8000 miles and your tires look like that?
I don’t get 8000 miles out of my street bike tires.
Dual sport tires of any type that could see 4000 miles would make me deliriously happy.
 
Ogre_fl said:
Seriously? 8000 miles and your tires look like that?
I don’t get 8000 miles out of my street bike tires.
Dual sport tires of any type that could see 4000 miles would make me deliriously happy.
Click to expand...

95% street, very little use of the brakes. 35-38psi. Wheel was balanced from day one as well. I was a little surprised as well. Could have probably squeezed another 500-1000 miles. My commute is through some turns, spent some time on the outside of the tread as well. I got just under 6k on my Gen II KLR with the stock Dunlop. FWIW, I tip the scales at 240 with all gear, plus I bungee 10Lbs of lunchbox on rear rack. Also, no crack in rear tail section yet.
 
And, I just found the Achilles heel of the K60: clay. I took the TR out this weekend in the Georgia clay and it got nasty really quickly. The K60 is a great tire for hardpack and gravel, but not clay. It is still a great road biased tire with decent off road ability.
 
RidingDonkeys said:
And, I just found the Achilles heel of the K60: clay.
Click to expand...

Yep, totally agree. I have a K60 rear and a dreaded Trailwing on the front (needed a tyre urgently & options were limited). A great combination for road riding with no weave or wobble but hit some wet dirt or clay and the blood starts pumping really fast.
 
To to get decent traction in clay, only true MX tire would do fine... some solution might be pairing rear DS tire (k60 or TKC80) with more off-road biased front tire that doesnt get too weathered on pavement - like Pirelli MT21.
 
I put a set of Karoo T on my Terra this week. First time I've ridden a bike with knobbies. It was a bit of a shock at first. The bike handled like it had two flat tyres. After about 100km of about 50:50 sealed/unsealed it's handling much better on road. Really inspiring my confidence on the dirt and especially on freshly graded road. Have a week off work and hoping the weather isn't too bad and I get a couple of days riding. Planning to load up and hit the hills.
 
nev.. said:
I put a set of Karoo T on my Terra this week. First time I've ridden a bike with knobbies. It was a bit of a shock at first. The bike handled like it had two flat tyres. After about 100km of about 50:50 sealed/unsealed it's handling much better on road. Really inspiring my confidence on the dirt and especially on freshly graded road. Have a week off work and hoping the weather isn't too bad and I get a couple of days riding. Planning to load up and hit the hills.
Click to expand...
Let us know what you think of that tire after you've had more time on it. I'm especially interested in what you think because you are new to knobbies. :cheers:
 
ebrake said:
So it's almost time for new tires and my head is spinning. My riding so far has been, sadly, all street focused because of my urban location. So I'm thinking of getting a more road biased tire for round 2.

Option 1: New set of road biased tires
I am liking the Pirelli MT90's so far, reviews read that they seem to do really well on the street but will retain some light offroading abilitites.

I also stumbled upon the Conti Trail Attack 2's which allegedly, according to the gobal conti website, are offered in 140/80-18.

There is also the Bridgestone Battle axe option, but then I lose all offroading options :(

Then there is option 2:
Buy a set of Strada wheels/have some aftermarket ones made/get some GS6650 wheels to work. Put some sweet agressive road rubber or 90/10 DS tires on those and some TKC80's(or similar) on the stock wheels and switch out wheelsets when necessary.

Then there is option 3:
Put some road biased tires from option 1 on the stock wheels for now and then have a aftermarket set of wheels laced up/purchase a second set of Terra wheels and put TKC80's or simmilar on the aftermarket set and switch wheelsets when necessary.


Also does anyone have any experience with the Conti Trail Attack 2's? Would the Terra be too lightweight of a bike to handle getting those tires up to temperature? Are they too beefy of a tire for the Terra?

Anyone running MT90's?

Has anyone tried mounting up GS650 wheels? Would it be a plug and play? I've read the sprocket works, but I doubt that indicative of anything and I'm worried about chain line and all the other variables.

Anyone on here have 2 wheelsets for their TR? If so, who put together you second set?


Talk to me guys.....I'm confuzzled and I'm selling my baby KLR so I have some mod money to play with. Tell me what YOU would do....
Click to expand...
I put the battle ax bt45 on front and rear. Same size front but went to a 150/80/18 rear very happy with the tires I've had the bike laid over on both the stock Sahara 3s and battle ax enough to scrape pegs.
 
I put the battle ax bt45 on front and rear. Same size front but went to a 150/80/18 rear very happy with the tires I've had the bike laid over on both the stock Sahara 3s and battle ax enough to scrape pegs.[/quote]

Thats what I'm talkin about. This bike (terra) sure leans easy.
 
vodka said:
I put the battle ax bt45 on front and rear. Same size front but went to a 150/80/18 rear very happy with the tires I've had the bike laid over on both the stock Sahara 3s and battle ax enough to scrape pegs.
Click to expand...

Thats what I'm talkin about. This bike (terra) sure leans easy.[/quote]
sure does.
 
I'm having a hard time deciding between Continental Escapes (90/90R21 & 140/80R17) or Avon Gripsters (90/90R21 & 130/80R17) due to my location I spend the majority of my time on road and do plan some long trips on the highway. Would the 130 make much difference in handling/speedo?
 
[quote="ebrake

Talk to me guys.....I'm confuzzled and I'm selling my baby KLR so I have some mod money to play with. Tell me what YOU would do....[/quote]





Dificult task anyway.. on my experience, the best for my old XR 650 L was BRIGESTONE TRAILWING T302/309. In europe has two diferent grips, and romboidal one it seems to run very well on tarmac.
I ve normally used, the trail one TW302 and i was really very glad for long durability and compormise off road.
 
For mostly road use I opted for a used set of BMW GS cast rims (not very expensive BTW) and Full Bore ADV 19/17 tubeless radials.
They actually are not that bad off road either, the tread compares some what to the stock Terra Saharas.

I am still trying to use up the stock tires and will put knobbies on the stock Terra rims for more off road use.

 
The bridgey bt45 front is a good road only tyre, but I really don't like the bt45 rear. They just never got it right. If you haven't got ABS then go to a decent rear if you have a 17" rear, 18" is harder to find. We have Pilelli mt60's on Sally's DRZ400 sm ( with a 21" front wheel) and they are pretty god dirt ROAD tyre.
 
Just a heads up on the Kenda Big Block. My rear is about half worn and cupping a bit at 1500 miles. Hoping to get 3000-3500 out of the rear. The front will likely last forever.
 
I'm going to say it again, cause the Mitas surpass any d/s tires i've ever used. Superb traction on the street, really important, as i live on a very twisty section of Ca hwy 1. Very solid all rounder off road. Hands above the Heidenau. Switched the front out at 9500mi and the rear just turned 10k of pretty hard use. Shipped from MX1 in Canada for $260, or $280, don't recall. The supplier has some KLR owners that get 20k out of them. Sort of on par with the Mefo's.....highly recommend em'!
 
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