Retyrement

"There comes a time," the Walrus said...

As far as motorcycle tyres are concerned, the time for replacing these hoops of expensive rubber comes with alarming frequency. Expect perhaps 8000km from the rear tyre of a large and powerful motorcycle: something to do with pushing  100 horses through an area of around eight square inches.

The best tyres for my Kawasaki 1400GTR are, according to motorcycle forums, Michelin Pilot Road. Alas, the local UAE Michelin importer doesn't bring in motorbike tyres. The Continental Tyres shop didn't have any suitable tyres in my size, nor did the salesman fulfill his promise to phone me when he found out if my tyres would ever be available. Short of personal mail order via Aramex Shop 'n' Schlepp, which is likely to be horribly expensive and subject to 5% import tax, I'm left with the option of scouring the local tyre shops.

Over at Liberty Automobiles, where the Kawasaki workshop lives, I was advised that it would be cheaper to obtain Pirelli tyres from the importer rather than through Kawasaki. I found a pair of Angel ST in my size.

Well, actually, the rear tyre isn't the correct size. It's a 190/55 rather than Kawasaki's recommended 190/50. But the forums (again) report that some riders prefer the taller profile. Anyway, in December I bought the last pair in the shop and took them home. I then proceeded to wear out the old Metzelers.

Almost as bald as Yul Brynner's
glabrous twin brother

By the time January came around, the old front tyre was pretty much shot. Even though there was still some life in the rear, I changed both because messing with different brands on the same high performance machine may be asking for all manner of unpleasant handling surprises.

In my GTR, all previous tyre sets have made the bike corner in the same characteristic way. When leaning into a bend, the bike wants to stand up, and it requires a gentle push on the inside handlebar to keep it leaning at the correct angle. As the front tyre wears, its profile gets more pointed, and the rear profile gets flatter. The profile mismatch makes this standing up progressively more pronounced.

Angel on the front

Angel on the rear

The first thing I noticed with the new Pirelli Angels is that the bike was much easier to tip into a curve than the previous set. I accept that I'd gradually got used to how the bike behaved on the previous tyres, and this was the shock of the new, but the way that the bike now holds a constant lean angle in corners with no steering input from me was new, and a very pleasant surprise. Steering is now totally neutral. My guess, and it is a guess because I don't have a PhD in motorcycle chassis design, is that the taller rear tyre more closely matches the profile of the front.

A useful side-effect of the larger diameter rear tyre is that the speedometer no longer over-reads, and an unexpected bonus is that the bike's easier to put on to the centrestand.

Pic from Fast Bikes magazine.
Obviously not me. 

And it still fits under the rear hugger mudguard. All in all, a success. I'm hoping for long tyre life as well as the promised super grip, but I fear that these features are mutually exclusive.

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Tyred of this

Large and virile motorcycles destroy tyres. Getting 10,000km out of the rear rubber can be quite an achievement, and the weight of the Goatcycle causes the front one to wear out at an alarming rate too. The local Pirelli agent carries a tiny selection of very expensive bike tyres. Part of the reason for the expense is that they’re actually street-legal racing rubber: exceptionally grippy and incredibly soft. I don’t want racing tyres on a sports-tourer. Being the Stig’s slow, fat cousin, I’ve little need for excessive grip. I only want enough so that the bike won’t go slideways on roundabouts. Tyres that don’t immediately wear down to the cords after riding in a straight line would be good too; Qatar doesn’t have very many bendy roads. The perfect solution is a multiple-compound tyre, which is rock hard in the middle and soft and sticky at the edges.

The local Continental Tyres dealer carries such tyres, but not in my sizes, and no he doesn’t know when he’s going to get some Road Attacks. “Maybe April. Insha’Allah.”

Kawasaki does have some original equipment Bridgestones, but I don’t want those. I know from experience that they are less than confidence-inspiring, and are the only tyres I’ve ever encountered where the front wears out faster than the rear. It must take some extra special design expertise to achieve this, at the same time delivering soft rubber that doesn’t grip very well. Either Pirelli or Metzeler suit me and the bike very well, but suitable sizes are Not Coming In Doha™.

The Michelin agent promised that he’d call me. Much as anticipated, he hasn’t, so the apparently wonderful dual-compound Pilot Road 2s aren’t going to happen to a bike near me any time soon.

So it seems as if I’m unable to give my free money to the local agents, and instead eBay and Aramex Shop-n-Schlepp will get the business. Now probably in the autumn because I’ll not do much riding over the summer months, and the current tyres still have some realistic life.

It’s not just motorcycle tyres. I’m trying and failing to locate replacement rubber for Rio, the Tear-Arse. I’d like something slightly more knobbly than the stock tyres, and maybe just a teeny bit bigger. Naturally, nobody has my size in stock, especially the alleged purveyor of my favourites, Cooper Discoverer ATRs. “Maybe April. Insha’Allah.”

Actually, I did find one. I need five. Unfortunately the teeny bit oversize would prevent me from using the hard spare-wheel cover, which is a bit disappointing. And I’m not paying QAR3,900 after discount (which is £650 in old money). The Goatmobile cost no more than QAR2,500 to re-boot, and those were much, much bigger. After the man in the tyre shop removed the QAR850 sticky label and discovered a QAR625 label underneath, he still wouldn’t go below QAR2,900.

Part of the tyre supply problem is that a newish law in Qatar forbids anyone from selling tyres that are more than a specified age, which may be three years. After that, new stock has to be destroyed. Surprise, surprise: dealers minimise their stock levels and only carry the fast-moving lines. There’s also a rule that all after-market tyres must be rated Temperature A. This is sensible, given the ludicrously high temperatures the region attains during the summer. Yet vehicles are imported and sold as merchantable with Temperature B tyres fitted. Might it not be a good idea to legislate for the higher rating to be supplied to consumers when they buy new cars? And while we’re obsessing with rules to protect us from dodgy tyres, how about doing something about the appalling state of truck tyres on most HGVs? The legal minimum tread depth is not “It’s OK if it stays inflated.”

Why am I looking to replace car tyres already? Well, my new Daihatsu has been standing in the showroom since 2009 and the tyres have all developed flat spots. This was very obvious when I had the wheels balanced. I’ve argued the toss with the Daihatsu workshop, citing words like “merchantable quality” and “warranty”, but the manager sent me away and suggested that the flat spots would go away by 5,000km. I suspect the only true bit is the sending away. There is precisely zero evidence so far that the flat spots are disappearing.

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Armoured

The local climate is hellish on tyres. Off-roaders deflate for sand driving, and this stresses and cracks the sidewalls, as well as heats up the air within. So it’s hardly surprising that we as drivers are encouraged to check the pressures and inspect our tyres regularly for damage and deterioration.

Supposedly, if the tyres are over four years old, when a vehicle is presented for inspection it will fail. The rule seems to be “no tyres over five years old”, and obviously if it’s over four at this year’s inspection, it’ll become a mobile traffic offence within a year.

How much of this actually happens in the Real World - or even here? Tyres have a date stamp on the sidewall that typically reads something like “1809” which means that it was manufactured in Week 18 of 2009, and it’s from this date that the five-year clock starts ticking. Did you check the date of manufacture when you last bought tyres? I did, and insisted that one of them be replaced with a newer version before it was even fitted. “Three summers” is the recommended life for tyres in the UAE, so says the manager over at Renaissance Tires. I wish my motorbike tyres would last three summers. Ten thousand kilometres maximum, if I’m lucky!

Tyres suffer an inordinate amount of abuse, and car tyres are usually cracked and knackered well before they’re down to the treadwear indicators. Yet we can still find tyres that are as bald as an American eagle. Apart from the legal aspect, worn-out treadless tyres have zero grip in wet conditions and can pop without warning. Check out the shredded rubber all over the Abu Dhabi – Dubai highway. Each one tells a scary story.

It’s also worth checking the speed and temperature grades stamped on the sidewalls. There’s some dodgy 4x4 rubber out there that’s only rated for 100kph, and because it’s mostly plastic it grips in the wet like a fried egg in a Teflon pan.

So it doesn’t rain in the UAE? Well, mostly true, but you often get spillages from irrigated landscaping flowing on to the roundabouts. Unexpected loss of grip on a sharp bend? Thrilling moment.

Making the unreasonable but inevitable comparison with the UK:-

A lot of British roads are narrow, bendy, often damp, frequently covered with trees and lined with ditches and walls. Compare with the ram-rod straight Emirates roads, where running off the highway should merely involve a bumpy ride down a 1:6 gravel slope into the adjacent desert.

Defective tyres contributed to 1% of all reported UK accidents in 2008. Defective tyres contribute to “more than half of road traffic accidents” according to Dubai RTA as reported in last Thursday’s 7DAYS.

Dubai Police 2002 statistics say 13% of all accidents involved an overturned vehicle; in 2005 it was 7%. Compare with UK where in 2008, 3.8% of car accidents involved an overturn.

I have the 2002 and 2005 reports as hard copies, but the UK stats came from here.

Where is all this leading? Last week I was leaving Abu Dhabi and a car passed me, blew a tyre, and came to a steady halt on the verge. I stopped to see that the driver was alright, and offered assistance, which was much appreciated by the driver who would otherwise have had to wait to be rescued by her husband who was in Dubai. Hence the “Goat in Shining Armour” cliché. The spare was good, and all tools were available. The tyre was complete trash, shredded to rubberised string. I was relieved to note that the rotation direction was OK. It would have been twice the work to put the spare on the left and the left on the right.

When I had a tyre blowout a couple of years ago I wrestled the car to the roadside and changed the wheel without fuss, apart from whinging about the rain and the dark and having to find the wheel nuts by Braille.

So why did the truck that blew out a tyre in front of Beloved Wife on the Emirates Road spin through 540 degrees before stopping in the middle lane? Why do so many drivers seem to lose control after a blowout and put the car on its roof? Why did a minibus that had a puncture swerve into the concrete barrier and shower Beloved Wife’s car with loose gravel? Just as well there was a barrier between the main line and the service road...

And why does a “Tyre blowout in race for red light...” cause an utterly appalling fatal, multi-vehicle pile-up and fire on Al Sufouh Road?

I’m glad that’s sorted out: It was the tyre wot dunnit. Not racing on the highway; not driving without due care; not driving like a buffoon. Bad tyre! Doubtless the police and the courts will throw the book at it.

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Do you love the commute? Err...

The Goatmobile costs around Dh1.50 per kilometre to run. That includes everything spent to date, but does not allow for any money back when it’s traded in. It is assumed that there’ll be little if any residual value once I’ve finished abusing the vehicle on and off road. Perhaps I can get the odometer right around the clock and then sell it as low mileage but a bit tatty for 2004. More than a million kilometres. One careful caprine owner.

Perhaps the equivalent of a return trip to the Moon is starting to look faintly possible. As regular readers of this little corner of cyberspace will doubtless be aware, Muggins was made redundant a week or so ago, five days after bending over backwards to return from the UK, dodging airborne ash particles and generally cashing in favours with friends and family.

The boot up my jacksie happened on Thursday 29th April. I went into the office the following week to clear my desk, return the company laptop, deal with outstanding issues and leave my former boss with the world’s most comprehensive handover notes. So comprehensive were they that he did not find it necessary to ask any questions at all.

Later that same Thursday, one of my colleagues tried to give me some work to do and I apologised that as I no longer worked for the Firm, he would have to find one of the few remaining engineers to deal with his technical queries. The long story short is that my colleague passed my name and phone number to an employment agency on Thursday, the agent phoned me on Friday, I sent him my latest CV on Saturday, and on Wednesday 5th May I had an interview that was immediately followed by a job offer. I started the new job on Sunday 9th May, five working days after being told Sayonara, habibi.

Having been removed from the old sausage machine, this particular cog is now part of a different machine.

This proves that I have marketable skills; that there is demand for what I do. Unfortunately, my previous employer has clients who appear not to want those skills. More specifically, they want them but are unwilling to pay for them.

A further discussion of the new job brings me back to the subject of driving. I now work in Abu Dhabi, and am thus the latest applicant for the post of Driver who Incurs 1500km per Week at his Own Expense. Running the arithmetic reveals that renting a car and thrashing that into the ground would be marginally cheaper than running the Goatmobile, and there would be no inconvenience every seven weeks of getting the vehicle serviced. My motorbike would chew through a back tyre in typically one month because almost the entire journey is bolt upright on a motorway, and it would need to be serviced at the same time. Big bikes need a lot of servicing. However, a rented car would be a Yaris, Tiida or similar. Ugh. I’m on the horns of a trilemma. Bike; rented Yaris; Goatmobile.

Plus there are the added delights of navigating around the capital to find the elusive parking space. Roadworks on Salam Street are confusing and disruptive to bucolic yokels such as I: yesterday I was completely flummoxed and was unable to find my way out of the city via the new Yas Island highway. Twenty minutes after setting sail for home I was still within spitting distance of the office. This situation will, however, improve as I learn my way around Abu Dhabi.

Beloved Wife has agreed in principle that we should move house to somewhere closer to Abu Dhabi than the Crumbling Villa, yet within a sensible commute to her Dubai job. Assuming, of course, that we can find somewhere at a reasonable rent that is large enough for all our stuff.

Finally, as for EoD and Alexander’s suggestion of commiseratory or even celebratory drinkies, I should be at Dubai’s Oirish Village on Friday night after eightish. Dead easy to identify: I’m the one with the beard. And the horns. All welcome. RSVP in the comments.

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Are you not entertained?

There is a lot more to the institution that is the Gulf News Fun Drive than simply showing up on the day and having a jolly time in the desert. Just some of the various odds and ends that need organising come to mind:- Welcome packs, Goody bags, Permissions from the police and local authorities, Sponsors, Start venue, Finish venue, Catering, Breakdown recovery, Marshalling, and of course a Route.

Route selection starts several months prior to the event, and to this end, the Goat and his Goatmobile joined a small band of intrepid marshals last Friday to drive part of a prospective GNFD route. Clearly it has to be entertaining to drive, yet not too difficult for Fun Drivers who might not have a lot of – or indeed any – previous offroad experience. Picking a route by squinting at Google Earth tends not to reveal new fences, locked gates and in extreme cases, mile upon mile of new motorway. It would be a bit pointless if an off-road drive involved long sections on asphalt. Having dropped the tyre pressures to 15psi or even lower for sand use, protracted asphalt bashing beats hell out of the rubber.

Anyway, the seven of us in five cars representing Japan, Britain and the United States spent eight hours last Friday sweeping across great sandy swathes of the UAE. The Goat is of course sworn to absolute secrecy as to the route, notwithstanding that it is surely going to change repeatedly up to a final drive-through to erect the temporary signs. We found some interesting rocky bits and a lot of seif dunes that might become decidedly unseif after the ridges have been driven along by several hundred Fun Drivers. And we also discovered a magnificently dusty bowl that got a Nissan Patrol cross-axled and mired to above the axles. It took two winches to extricate the vehicle. Of course, photos had to be taken before anyone could render assistance: that’s in the rules.

There is a limit to how much entertainment is permitted in one day. It would probably be better, on reflection, if that particular area of quicksand is avoided. Fear not: there are many others yet to be discovered.

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Wheel meat again

The trouble with tyres is that they’re expensive and they wear out. In the harsh Arabian climate, tyres don’t last until the tread is down to its last 1.6mm. Heat and abuse see to it that the sidewalls crack or the tread separates from a tyre’s structure well before then. This is one reason why a vehicle presenting for registration with tyres more than four years old will automatically fail. It is, apparently, illegal to drive on the UAE’s roads with tyres more than five years old, so there has to be at least one year’s life remaining on the inspection day. The date of manufacture is embossed on the sidewall, along with other stuff including the size, temperature and speed ratings, plus lots of additional guff about not fitting the tyre on the wrong size of wheel rim.

Gulf News ran this story about the dangers of cheap, low-quality, expired or part-worn tyres. It is probably true that your average punter can’t tell the difference between a decent tyre with partly-worn tread and one that’s about to fall to pieces having been repeatedly run flat or bounced against kerbs. But where do you draw the line? If buying or using pre-owned tyres is illegal or at least inadvisable, then every rental car and certainly every second-hand car must have all its tyres replaced immediately there is a change of driver. And I can see that happening only in my wildest fantasies.

The biggest tyre scandal in my opinion is dodgy operators allegedly renting out a set of decent tyres just so that some villain, heedless of his own mortality, can get a vehicle past inspection, after which the old knackers are put back on. Do goods fleet operators keep a spare set of wheels for their trucks solely for registration purposes? Next time you’re at the traffic lights behind an artic, take a look at the treadless racing slicks with canvas or wires poking through, and draw your own conclusions.

“ ’Ello, ’ello, ’ello. Is this your vehicle, sir?”

I don’t appreciate unexpected blow-outs, so I recently replaced all five of the Goatmobile’s boots. After 46,000km of asphalt, gravel tracks and dune driving, there was plenty of tread left on the Cooper Discoverer H/Ts, but running deflated for off-road use had helped to crack the sidewalls. Several puncture repairs in each tyre finally drove me to buy replacements. The previous set, Yokohama Geolandar G901s lasted around 60,000km, but these really were knackered when I finally replaced them. The new boots are a set of Cooper Discoverer ATRs. The tread is a bit more aggressive than the H/Ts, but I didn’t really want anything too gnarly and knobbly. My friend over at the Yellow Box of Doom went out and bought STT tyres, which have so much tread they’d not look amiss on the back of the Mississippi Queen. But aggressive tread is extremely noisy on asphalt.

The standard tyre size for the Goatmobile is 265/65R17. I’ve been using slightly oversize 275/65R17, but I’ve now decided to try 265/70R17. The additional height of the latest tyres increases the circumference by about 3.4%, the practical consequence of which is the speedometer is now accurate instead of being optimistic. I was briefly tempted by the 285/70R17 but I was put off by the prodigious cost.

Speaking of cost, Renaissance Tyres (N25°16'26" E055°20'47") is the Cooper distributor and offers good service and the best price I’ve found. It’s cash only, and fitting and balancing is done for no additional charge at Radial Tyres (N25°16'19" E055°20'00"). About five years ago I gave up on trying to save a couple of additional dirhams by patronising the dodgy Sharjah tyre emporia. I was sold a set of old-stock that were ‘impossible to balance’, and it took a trip to Tyre Express to get the balancing done so that my old Landy didn’t shake to pieces at 80kph.

Concerning the fashion for nitrogen fills, I think the idea of inflating tyres with an inert gas instead of air has its merits, especially for high-performance vehicles like Airbus A340s, but I’m sceptical about the value for a normal, bog-standard street car. The benefits are supposed to include reduced oxidation and destruction of the tyre from the inside, no corrosion of the rim, and reduced temperature effects. Of course, if there’s no oxygen present, it can’t attack the tyre or the rim. Frankly, I suspect most of the benefits come from using processed, dry gas instead of ordinary boring old air, sucked from the humid atmosphere and blown into the tyre along with water vapour, carbon dioxide, bus drivers’ farts and small insects. And as for supposedly not expanding when it gets hot, I wonder which part of the gas law (PV/T = k) does not apply to nitrogen?

I was flicking through a motoring magazine while waiting for my new tyres to be fitted. Hilariously, some luminary stated in writing that, whilst 100% nitrogen wasn’t warranted for most vehicles, 30% nitrogen was recommended. Does he not know that air is already 80% nitrogen? How is he proposing to remove the additional 50%, and what is he going to insert in its place? Does he also not comprehend that the benefits of a nitrogen fill are only realised if oxygen and water are completely eliminated from the fill?

One final thought. In A View to a Kill, James Bond (Roger Moore) evades the Legions of Darkness by hiding underwater in a car wreck, breathing the contents of the spare tyre. I’d not recommend trying this with a nitrogen fill.

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