• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

Here we go. Best tires

I've been running the Shinko 700 front and rear. I ran these on the KLR and rather liked them. They are pretty much a 50/50 tire.



They work quite well on the pavement and pretty darn well in the dirt as long as it doesn't get too soft/muddy. I think the only tires that work well in soft sand/mud are very aggressive knobbies, which suck on the pavement and wear very fast.

I used D606s on my DRZ400 for years and they are OK as more of a 80/20 tire but they wear kinda fast and are expensive. The Shinko 700s run about $100/set and I get at least 4k miles out of a rear with probably 70-80% of that on the pavement. They don't wear goofy and are quiet, no howling.

I'm planning to try the IRC TR8 Front paired with a Shinko 244 rear on my DRZ soon. I ran a 244 on the rear of the KLR and it worked quite well in the dirt but walked on the knobs a bit on the pavement. I still got nearly 5k miles out of it though.

My $0.02
 
My OEM Sahara rear lasted 8400 miles with a 70/30 street-dirt mix. I decided to replace with the Heidenau K60 Scout 140/80-18. As you can see below, this size does not have the center rib like other 150 and 130 widths so I expect it will hook-up better off-road... we'll see. Based on many other user reviews, its a very good all-arounder for the type of riding we typically encounter here in the dry Arizona heat.

BTW... I also bought the Mitas e07 front but haven't mounted it yet... my Sahara is good for at least another 1000mi or so. I'll post it when I make that swap.

K60 Scout.JPG
 
SnackAZ said:
My OEM Sahara rear lasted 8400 miles with a 70/30 street-dirt mix. I decided to replace with the Heidenau K60 Scout 140/80-18. As you can see below, this size does not have the center rib like other 150 and 130 widths so I expect it will hook-up better off-road... we'll see. Based on many other user reviews, its a very good all-arounder for the type of riding we typically encounter here in the dry Arizona heat.

BTW... I also bought the Mitas e07 front but haven't mounted it yet... my Sahara is good for at least another 1000mi or so. I'll post it when I make that swap.

View attachment 55717
Click to expand...


I've got 11,000 klms on my K60 rear with about 1,000klm remaining, does walk abit on wet tar

Have Mefo Explorer 99 to replace it
 
I've just swapped the stock Metzler Endurance tires for the Scout K60s on the Strada. It takes a couple hundred miles for the K60s to 'wear in' as they are a bit squirly at 70+ MPH from new. They are wearing rather well and stick very well in wet or dry conditions.

Nothing like the fabulous stickiness of my rear Dunlop 606/front Pirelli Scorpion combo on my WR250R. But those tires are showing significant wear after only 500 50/50 miles.
 
I purchased these same tires as well. Find them better than expected on pavement, and still good enough for the kinds of back roads I ride.
Very happy so far.
 
My
SnackAZ said:
My OEM Sahara rear lasted 8400 miles with a 70/30 street-dirt mix. I decided to replace with the Heidenau K60 Scout 140/80-18. As you can see below, this size does not have the center rib like other 150 and 130 widths so I expect it will hook-up better off-road... we'll see. Based on many other user reviews, its a very good all-arounder for the type of riding we typically encounter here in the dry Arizona heat.

BTW... I also bought the Mitas e07 front but haven't mounted it yet... my Sahara is good for at least another 1000mi or so. I'll post it when I make that swap.

View attachment 55717
Click to expand...

My Saharas lasted less than 8,000klms
 
Just mounted a tkc80 front and k60 rear on stock Strada wheels. 500 miles on them and they seem great.
 
12.000k's and still lots of meat left? :eek:

Still running the Mefo99 front?
Ok to ask where you've got that from?
The Mefo's are damn hard to get down here and I wouldn't mind a spare, love the one
I tripped over by chance.
 
danketchpel said:
I'm planning to try the IRC TR8 Front paired with a Shinko 244 rear on my DRZ soon.
Click to expand...
I ended up going with the IRC TR8 front and rear on the DRZ.

Front


Rear


I like the rear quite a bit. The front isn't the best is softer surfaces as one might imagine given the closer spaced/larger knobs. It's a trade off. On the pavement they are definitely better than the D606s, pretty smooth and very little noise. Traction and stability seem quite good for a knobby.

I've only got one ride on them so I can't comment on wear other than I believe they will meet or beat the 606.

I paid about $140 OTD mounted and balanced for the pair, so a significant cost savings over 606s.
 
glitch_oz said:
12.000k's and still lots of meat left? :eek:

Still running the Mefo99 front?
Ok to ask where you've got that from?
The Mefo's are damn hard to get down here and I wouldn't mind a spare, love the one
I tripped over by chance.
Click to expand...

I still have a Karoo 3 on the front, found the Mefo 99 Rear at Adventure Moto in Dural, NSW
Have not decided on the front tyre yet
Still very much Kenda Big Block or Mitas E10
Any thoughts?
 
I'm running the Golden tyre 216aa up front from Zip Ty racing . So far I really like it. Now my back feels loose. I am going to try the 908 in the rear.
 
E9,

I run the Kenda Big Blocks. I am very impressed with the current generation of Big Block tires. I have almost 4K on the front and rear. It appears that I have another 500-800 miles left of them. I found the front to be extremely sketchy on pavement for the first 75-100 miles but after that, they stick like glue to gravel and tarmac. I'll be purchasing another set.
 
drzcharlie said:
E9,

I run the Kenda Big Blocks. I am very impressed with the current generation of Big Block tires. I have almost 4K on the front and rear. It appears that I have another 500-800 miles left of them. I found the front to be extremely sketchy on pavement for the first 75-100 miles but after that, they stick like glue to gravel and tarmac. I'll be purchasing another set.
Click to expand...

Hi Charlie - Cheers Mate
 
glitch_oz said:
12.000k's and still lots of meat left? :eek:

Still running the Mefo99 front?
Ok to ask where you've got that from?
The Mefo's are damn hard to get down here and I wouldn't mind a spare, love the one
I tripped over by chance.
Click to expand...

Adventure Moto in Dural stocks Mefo 99s
 
SnackAZ said:
My OEM Sahara rear lasted 8400 miles with a 70/30 street-dirt mix. I decided to replace with the Heidenau K60 Scout 140/80-18. As you can see below, this size does not have the center rib like other 150 and 130 widths so I expect it will hook-up better off-road... we'll see. Based on many other user reviews, its a very good all-arounder for the type of riding we typically encounter here in the dry Arizona heat.

BTW... I also bought the Mitas e07 front but haven't mounted it yet... my Sahara is good for at least another 1000mi or so. I'll post it when I make that swap.

View attachment 55717
Click to expand...
I have exactly that setup & like it alot. It feels alot like the Saharas which I also liked. I got just under 10,000klms on the stockers.
 
drzcharlie said:
E9,

I run the Kenda Big Blocks. I am very impressed with the current generation of Big Block tires. I have almost 4K on the front and rear. It appears that I have another 500-800 miles left of them. I found the front to be extremely sketchy on pavement for the first 75-100 miles but after that, they stick like glue to gravel and tarmac. I'll be purchasing another set.
Click to expand...


Hi Charlie How's the Big Block on the front going?
 
It's still on there. Incredible, really. I thought they would be gone by now. As I said before I very likely still have another 500-700 miles left on them. but I did reverse them to wear the blocks the other way after my last post. I have a new set waiting in the wings for installation.
 
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