Slippery new tires. Can I sand the surface?

I know this is an old thread.
Mount tire, find some stone or dirt roadway. do a quick burnout and your done, ready to go.
 
From what I have read, most manufacturers no longer use release agents anymore and sanding the tires to remove the outer surface is mostly cosmetic and does not accomplish anything of value, pretty much a waste of your time from what I understand.

With modern tire manufacturing techniques and mold technology, scrubbing in a tire now is mostly the completion of a chemical curing process that is accomplished by successive heat cycles, not by physical scrubbing of the the tires exterior surface as it was years ago.

The best procedure seems to be to just go out and ride, more conservatively at first, until the tires have been subjected to a few heat cycles to allow the chemistry to happen.
 
Andrew Shadow said:
From what I have read, most manufacturers no longer use release agents anymore and sanding the tires to remove the outer surface is mostly cosmetic and does not accomplish anything of value, pretty much a waste of your time from what I understand.

With modern tire manufacturing techniques and mold technology, scrubbing in a tire now is mostly the completion of a chemical curing process that is accomplished by successive heat cycles, not by physical scrubbing of the the tires exterior surface as it was years ago.

The best procedure seems to be to just go out and ride, more conservatively at first, until the tires have been subjected to a few heat cycles to allow the chemistry to happen.
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better be sure of that, some not most. Have Bridgestone h50 and you have to scrub them in. It took about a hundred miles. It's more than a slick surface, it's like a super thin rubber coating that once it starts pealing off you can almost peal it off by hand. I just put another set on and I will put some pics up soon.
 
Al st1100 said:
better be sure of that, some not most.
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Firstly, no general statement issued by a manufacturer is likely to apply to every single product that they make. This applies to motorcycle tire manufacturers as well.

Secondly, I have no idea whether the number of motorcycle tire manufacturers, or the number of tire models that they make, which do not use release agent is the majority of them, the minority of them, or somewhere in between.

I do know that it doesn't matter a tinkers damn what I am or am not sure of, because it is not me making this claim. This is what several of the major motorcycle tire manufacturers have written themselves about the tires that they produce.

Among their comments, Bridgestone specifically wrote;
The release agent is something that is in the actual mold and is used to allow the removal of the tyre from the mold itself.
The higher the quality of the mold, the less release agent is required. Some tyre manufacturers’ tyres do have a release agent in them. Bridgestone, however, use very high quality molds so our tyres do not have a release agent in them at all.

I am just contributing what I have learned on the subject. Anyone reading this is free to do as they wish.
 
I suppose one could scuff up that 2 inch chicken strip off each side with sandpaper
 
sander-polisher.jpg

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And get rid of those pesky chicken strips while you're at it.
 
I have read that accelerating and braking heats tires better than zig-zagging. So does running them under-inflated.
 
Unless I'm headed to the track in a couple of hours on new shoes (I have 0 track time and desire none) I just ride. They'll scrub in to my riding still soon enough no antics needed.
 
I like the Continental RoadAttack III tires. They use a different process to make them, and they need no breaking in.

Chris
 
Maybe I am different than the average Joe, but I have never intentionally scrubbed in a set of tires. I just ride. There are more important things to worry about, deer, turkeys, other drivers, etc. Oh and if you are a peg scraper maybe you don't need to ask this question.
 
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