Trailing edge front tyre wear.......why?
 

Hi all
We are currently 6 months into our 3 year travels around SA. All has been going well and its time to replace the metzler karro 3 front tyre after 20000 km on it. It has performed great in our opinion but as it reaches the end of its life i notice it is the trailing edge of each knob that has worn down with the front edge still with a decent amount of meat on it......why would this be.
The bike is a 2015 gsa with the only front end work being replacement of forks due to the recall and a steering damper that failed after 20000km which hasnt been replaced yet
Thanks David

It's 100% normal, that's the way knobs always wear. I've never gotten a good official explanation, but it's to do with the front of the know folding in, and forcing the back up. Don't worry about it.

With semi-knobby tires, I flip the front around about 2/3-3/4 of the way through its lifespan. That evens out the scalloping and squeezes out a bit of extra life.

This is not something you probably want to do if you 1. value the smoothest possible ride, or 2. greatly value every last little bit of traction and edge-hold. It works fine for the run-of-the-mill adventure touring that I'm generally doing. Of course I'd be interested in hearing any convincing argument against doing this.

Hope that's helpful.

Mark

Underinflation ....is a reason.

Safe ride

Thanks to all that replied..... most appreciated and from others i seen i believe just normal wear

I say normal wear also. I think it has to do with braking forces on the tread blocks.

I've seen it (always) on my knobby tires (especially TKC80) and I'm quite careful with my tire pressures.

On my bike (DR650) the wear pattern makes handling pretty squirmy on grooved pavement and fast, but bumpy, corners. I don't get very good mileage on those tires because the handling gets so annoying. They're great in the dirt, though.


............shu