Looking for some feedback on the trackside-only PR's vs. the retail channel tires.
I understand that the PR line is different from the retail line, and I bought my tires from Tom Mason last season. After some experimentation and advice from Tom, I ended up settling on a PR1 front, medium/soft rear combo on my SV.
This year, I am on a team with a few other guys, and we have a sponsor that has generously offered to provide us with a significant quantity of free tires. We just need to let them know what we want. The trick is, they're an independent retail shop and do not have access to the race-distribution "PR" line of tires.
The quantity of tires offerred will not get us through the whole season, but will put a decent dent in our tire costs for the year.
I'm thinking that a viable option might be to go with all fronts for our freebees, depending on how the retail "soft" fronts compare to the PR1's or PRC's. The logic in this being that all our bikes use the same size front tire, there are fewer front tire models to choose from, and since they tend to last longer than rears, we won't need to beg Tom to install tires we didn't buy from him as often. This would also give us the flexibility to go with whatever Tom's flavor of the day is for our rear-tire needs.
Does this make sense? Does anyone know what the real-world difference between the retail "soft" and PR series front tires might be?
I don't know anyone that uses anything but a PRC front. I know Tom does say that a lot of the SV guys prefered the PR1/2 though. I have found the med/soft rears work the best for me personally with a PRC front.
Look into Pirelli Diablo III's. Supposedly a good tire and the spec tire for the European Superstock Champeensheep.
use all your freebies for the rears. They don't make the pr series for the rears on sv sized tires so you're basically going to be buying the "commerical" race tire anyway. Then you can buy prc's or pr1's from trackside. :thumb:
Now as far as knowing exactly what the difference are between the regular races and the pr series, I know the shape of the prc is a lot different than a regular power race, the pr1 and 2 are pretty much the same shape. I also believe that the pr2 has a harder carcass. Now what have I noticed from the tires. The PRC rock. They stick, the last a long time, they inspire confidence trail braking. PR1, overall better feeling front tire than a regular power race, but not as good as the PRC. PR2, I HATED that tire. I couldn't keep it up to temp, it slid all over the place on me, I couldn't tell what it was doing at all. I'd regular use an regular power race soft or med/soft.
With that said I'm using prc front tires this year on my sv :thumb: