It is the cost that has my attention. What I think of as premium tires (Angel ST or GT, any of the Pilot Road series, and similar) are very expensive tires. At the same time, it seems that tire performance falls of when moving away from these tires. Shinko may be an alternative but to be honest, I have not yet tried a set.... every time I get close, I change my mind and buy Angel or Pilot Roads again. The idea that there may be a decent, good performing tire with good life out there, from a major manufacturer, at a substantially reduced price, is attractive to me. And of course it is possible that a more reasonable priced tire is AS GOOD as the tires mentioned above. So that is my interest in hearing how those new Bridgestones work out for you.
Brian
Well hopefully someone I know who has used both (on this forum) will chime in then. He is going back to a T30 for a few weeks-month before he heads off to Star etc where I understand his plan is to be on a new set of PR4's for that
And then you have Joe to chime in once he gets a few more miles too
Atleast then you have people with the same bike, albeit they both have very different experiences with tire life...one getting double the mileage out of the same tires as the other.
Bridgestone did have a $40 rebate going on these (T30) in March as well, which would have put them at $200 for the set, vs what.......$340 for the PR4... (rumor says the rebate will return late summer, but it is rumor)
The feedback I have gotten from those who are running the T30- and came off BT023's is they like the feel of the T30 better, the profile seems more triangulated (more sportbike tireish) but thus far other than a couple of CBR1000rr guys I haven't seen them get worn out to have a good judge of mileage difference between a BT023 and a T30.
The feedback from people who came from PR2's- well the fronts were all cupped on the PR2's on every bike I have ever seen, so all these people went from junk to new, and all but one took years to wear out their tires, so feedback from any of them is more than suspect at best. with the exception of possibly mileage differences ( Joel being the only exception to the years comment (about 4-6 weeks to a set) and he didn't get any more mileage from a PR2 than from a BT023- and I am not sure what he gets out of the T30/T30GT)
The CBR1000RR guys both made an extra, 820 and 960 miles on the rears from their last BT023---but that could simply be riding/road selection/speed/temperature differences--so I don't conclude that to be definitive proof of anything other than they could have ridden differently and it was later in the year-thus cooler temps and likely less aggressive riding
Some other choices- although not down to this price range.
Roadsmart II--roughly $250 a set
I mostly have sport bike guys running these on the rear with a Q3 front, but there are a couple VFR800 guys on them with over 9k on them and no cupping (was an issue with the Roadsmart) and still showing decent life left...I saw one of them this spring but don't remember what the tread depth remaining was, but it seemed like it would last him til mid summer (he only rides about 6-8k a year)-- which I would surmise may get him near 12k
Z8-- similarly priced to the Angel and the PR3/4
I have people on them and some of these guys are over 10k now (both on ST1300's), which almost nobody around here gets that on sport or sport touring tires, and it is more than they got out of their last tires
As far as shitco's go--- I would not even install those on my worst enemies bike even if you handed me the leprechaun and his pot o gold--- but obviously someone is buying them.
