I ride a Yamaha FRJ1300, a friend of mine a Yamaha FZ1 and we have another friend who, of the life of us we don't know why, rides a BMW R1150GS. We tend to ride together a lot and most of the time we go on a bike tours together. We ride at the same speed as each other most of the time and from what we can gather we get the same kind of use out of our bikes.

Now the thing is, despite the comparative workloads, I'm getting about 6500 kilometers maximum from my tires, my friend on the Yamaha FZ1 about the same, while the BMW GS-man, who uses these chunky dirt-style tires, has gone at least 12,000 kilometers on his tires. Twice what what we get!

Can you tell us why that is? And us there a tire that us Yamaha riders can opt for what will give us the usages as the BMW GS-man is getting while not totally compromising everyday grip.

Thanks

From what you write the two Yamaha's are fitted with sports tires while the BMW is most likely to be on a dual-sport tire. Although you ride together and maintain the same kind of speeds, the two tires will be functioning quite differently.

Under road touring conditions, it is unlikely that the sports tires will use more than 50 to 75 percent of their performance potential, while the Dual-sport tire will be using rather more. In other words, the BMW is running a tire which is more suited to the job whereas the two Yamaha's are wasting some of their tires' potential.

A sports tire has gripper compound and a more aggressive profile, which means it will wear more quickly than a tire with more of a sportstouring orientation, especially in the center. I would recommend you look at sportstouring tires for the Yamaha FJR and the FZ1. These should be more than adequate for your needs.

The will return significantly higher kilometer count before need to replaced and it is unlikely that you'll find the limits of their performance on normal roads in Thailand.