"The new Michelin Road 5 will be available in two front and five rear sizes to fit a wide range of sport touring motorcycles. The tire will go on sale at retail locations nationwide starting Jan. 1, 2018.
The Road 5 replaces Pilot Road 4 and will ultimately replace the Pilot Road 4 GT, and Pilot Road 4 Trail tires in the coming years. Michelin reps say that the Pilot Road 3 will remain in the product line up in limited size options."
Posted this on the RT Facebook, but I asked the question about Road 5s. Make your own decisions
Hello Robert, Thanks for the interest in Michelin tyres for your bike. The Pilot Road 4 GT was developed while working closely with BMW to adapt the standard Pilot Road 4 to better suit the particular demands of the R 1200 RT and a short list of other bikes. Michelin were not entirely happy with the handling of the bike when using the standard tyres, in particular when/if the bike was pushed quite hard, and we engineered a solution to ensure rider satisfaction. The solution was to create a new casing construction with optimised ply angles, made possible by a new assembly process to increase cornering stiffness. Cornering stifness has increased by 15% without resorting to increasing the number of casing plies which otherwise would have added approx 700g to the weight of the tyre. This construction guarantees the stability of the bike at speed without sacrificing comfort. The Pilot Road 4 GT remains our recommended fitment for your bike, and the standard Road 5 tyres are not recommended. We are developing a Road 5 GT tyre, but it will not be available in 2018. I hope that this helps, Best regards,
With the Road 5, Michelin have come up with "less is more". Moving away from a heavily cut tyre to one which has a slick shoulder. Who's going to get tipped over on to the edge of the tyre in the wet. The trend with Pilot Roads was to increase the sipes (cuts) to improve wet weather grip. Other manufacturers have improved wet weather grip without removing too much rubber.
The Z8 as pictured has no siping. Those are rain grooves.
Siping is the very thin cuts like you see on the Pilot Road series, esp. the PR3 front which has loads of sipes across the tyre width.
Those sliced up Pilot Road tyres can be a bit squirmy, all the little blocks can move around and get hot.
I think the newer designs such as the Metzeler Roadtec01 and Michelin Road 5 with large areas of rubber and rain grooves and using silica and so on for wet grip can be better overall in changeable conditions and roads.
I had the Roadtec01 and liked them a lot, then had to get Pilot Road 4 because that's all the dealer had at the time, I like them less and find the edge of the rear seems prone to spin and move around. It just isn't as solid feeling as I'm used to. The new Road 5 looks more akin to the Roadtec01 and user anecdotes so far have been positive, but so far they aren't available in the heavyweight versions for our RTs.
It would appear that there are at least two options to improve wet grip, sipes or silica-enhanced compounds. Perhaps thoughts are that, more cuts, either sipes or grooves = better wet grip. Some tyre manufacturers have mainly used compound technology, whilst others have altered tread patterns. Looks like there is now a leaning towards using more of the benefits of both technologies.
Of the two tyres recommended by BMW Motorrad for the LC RT, looks like one predominantly uses compound technology, whilst the other employs more sipe technology.
Metzeler Roadtec Z8 "A new High Silica compound with Nano particles ensures performance and safety in all weather conditions."
"The rear tyre of the specifications (M) and (O) has a bi-compound mixture. The rubber compound in the central section of the tread area, depending on the tyre size, is on average 45 mm wide, with a 70% silica content specifically designed for higher mileage and stability at high speeds. The tyre shoulders comprise of approximately 88 mm on each side of the profile and have a 100% silica compound, which increases dramatically the chemical grip in the wet and reduces sliding under all conditions. The front tyre also consists of a 100% silica compound."
Michelin Pilot Road 4 GT "Tyres have innovative sipes, born out of our X-Sipe Technology, providing better grip on wet surfaces for added safety. And they look pretty different too!"
"Our XST sipe technology improves tyre performance and grip in the wet."
Last edited by David. on Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
