Adventure Bike Rider Forum

Recently had a set of TKC80’s fitted to my F650gs twin.
When I first rode on them the front felt horrible, really unstable, ultra sensitive to every steering input, felt like it wanted to drop into corners too fast and felt like it might let go at any moment.
I expected it to feel differently after riding on worn tyres, and it’s been years since I rode on anything vaguely knobbly, but this was Scary.
Decided to persevere, perhaps it was me not the tyres. Went up a really easy bit of dirt track and front was even worse, the same lane had been easier on the tourances I’d just taken off. Went and checked the pressures and they were 33 front, 36 rear. Picked a couple of numbers at random and dropped pressures to 26/28 and it’s like a different bike. Front end feels way more secure and confidence inspiring.
Like I said, the new tyre pressures were pure guesswork. Anybody got any advice re best pressures?

It will take a couple of hundres miles to knock the edges of them. I run normal road pressure's on my off road tyres. Then drop them off road. Road pressure's are suck and see. Your preference will be different than mine a d other peoples. Go normal.and adjust.
You will now be slightly paranoid, but they will bed in. Ride in the dry till then.
Good luck

As 00 Orange says, always reduce pressures for off road, you need to tyre to be able to squirm & flex to deal with the irregular surfaces.
On road, with dual purpose tyres, I've always found that the manufacturers recommended pressures feel too high.

So as 00 Orange says, experiment with gradual changes of say 2psi until you get a pressure combination that suits you (Sir!).

(On my LC8s, I've generally run 28/30 on road, 20/20 off road(front/back)).

Cheers Rob, always rely on one of the pensioners off the KTM forum to make me smile.
Good advice as usual

Ok, so the tyre pressures I guessed at seem pretty good on the road, now I’ve scrubbed them in I’ve already forgotten they are new tyres and feel confident pushing on a bit, but I spent some time off road today (well, off tarmac) and the back seemed fairly predictable (although I suspect losing a couple of psi might improve it “off road”) , but the front was, umm, less than confidence inspiring. Particularly on soft ground... I came off twice through the front end washing out but to be fair that’s probably as much to do with my lack of skill as the tyres (a bad workman blames his tools?)
Now I’ve been told that enduro riders tend to have the front at a higher psi than the back (true??).
So would you go higher or lower at the front?
Answers on a postcard to......

FatFreddy wrote: ↑Sat Feb 23, 2019 9:12 pm Ok, so the tyre pressures I guessed at seem pretty good on the road, now I’ve scrubbed them in I’ve already forgotten they are new tyres and feel confident pushing on a bit, but I spent some time off road today (well, off tarmac) and the back seemed fairly predictable (although I suspect losing a couple of psi might improve it “off road”) , but the front was, umm, less than confidence inspiring. Particularly on soft ground... I came off twice through the front end washing out but to be fair that’s probably as much to do with my lack of skill as the tyres (a bad workman blames his tools?)
Now I’ve been told that enduro riders tend to have the front at a higher psi than the back (true??).
So would you go higher or lower at the front?
Answers on a postcard to......

That's probably because the rear tyre has a stiffer carcass and needs less air in it.

I am going to buck the trend as I ran my TKCs at 30 psi both ends today , road, mud, gravel, etc. I cant be arsed with keep changing them even though I have a pump on board. Personally I find the only time really low pressure is an advantage is proper mud and possibly sand which I try to avoid at all cost anyway . I worry more about pinch punctures on the front especially on the heavier bikes. Slow down for the easy bits accelerate gently through the tricky stuff

My adventure this weekend. Not TCKs but tyre pressure too low got two punctures not a pinch as on different sides of the wheel

herman wrote: ↑Sun Feb 24, 2019 5:21 pm I am going to buck the trend as I ran my TKCs at 30 psi both ends today , road, mud, gravel, etc. I cant be arsed with keep changing them even though I have a pump on board. Personally I find the only time really low pressure is an advantage is proper mud and possibly sand which I try to avoid at all cost anyway . I worry more about pinch punctures on the front especially on the heavier bikes. Slow down for the easy bits accelerate gently through the tricky stuff

Hmmm, now bearing in mind I found 33 psi at the front almost unrideable on the road.... and 30psi isn’t that much different, am I missing a trick here? It feels counter intuitive but maybe a higher psi on the front might help.
I ran it at 26psi yesterday and because it felt unstable, considered dropping a few psi but asIwas miles from anywhere (no way to add a few psi if I accidentally let too much out)decided to try and ride round the problem (not well enough to stop me falling of a couple of times) and experiment later.
I shall find myself a little test route and I’m sure all will become clear once I’ve tried a few different pressures.

I run tkc80s on my xt660z. The manual says 29psi off road, i ran them at 24/25 for a couple of weeks in South Africa no problem.