Shinko 705 front, 700 rear? OK or NG?

[Rich82GS750TZ]

Been running 705s, advertised as 80% on/20% Off-road. I ride a lot of forest roads/dirt trails and these tires have been very sure-footed on all types of stuff. Good grip on the street too. Rear has over 5K miles, and is about ready to retire. Front has over 7K on it and should last me the rest of the season.

Rear:

Front:

I’m thinking of going more aggressive with the Shinko 700, advertised as a 60% on/40% Off-road. My research shows me that they don’t make a 700 to fit my front 19-1.85 wheel.

Now, I’ve always read that you should match tire treads front and rear. What kind of trouble would I expect if I ran a 700 rear and a 705 front?

The tire conversion charts on Cycle Gear and JP Cycles show me that the 5.1x17 67S TL is the right tire to fit my 17MT2.5 wheel. Sound right?

Shinko 700:

And no laughing at my Chicken strips, please. My fragile ego can’t take it.

 

[Rich82GS750TZ]

Bueller? ..........Bueller?

Anyone experience any horrors with running slightly mismatched/same brand tires, and lived to talk about it.

Maybe I'll just get one and see how it goes.

 

[Gorminrider]

I ride road tires and can't say about your hybrids on a road surface -but ime just match the general design and it should work fine. I commonly run different brands let alone varieties in model # .
There is an old trick of reversing direction of the rear for the front too- and this has worked fine for me too.

 

[oldGSfan]

Probably advrider forum would be a good place for info, I've ended up there a bit when searching for info on a thumper I had. My only non-constructive comment is: if they're good and sure footed, why change?

 

[Rich82GS750TZ]

Fair point. Guess I just want to try it. Maybe the 700 is even better. I’m happy with the 705. That’s not to say I haven’t had a few butt-puckering moments in the loose stuff.

 

[alke46]

Mismatched? I'll give you this Rich, on my Triumph Tiger I run a radial on the rear and a bias belted on the front. It came that way from the factory. So I wouldn't worry too much about it myself, but that's just me.

 

[bwringer]

You won't explode and die or anything, no. Try it and see!

And yes, people over on ADVrider run and experiment with all sorts of combinations. Its honestly not an issue at all; yes, the bike might handle differently, and you may or may not like the change depending on environment, but as long as you're somewhere near the ballpark of the correct size, and you pay attention to tube/tubeless issues where needed, it won't be unsafe.

I've run all the Shinkos -- Shinko 705, 700, 804/805 and 244 -- on my KLR650. As you mentioned, the 705 is excellent on pavement and surprisingly good off pavement. The 700 was OK-ish in both environments, but not great. I've run the 244 several times, and I think it works better in both environments. The 244 is markedly better off pavement than the 700, so that's what I've settled on when I need cheap but good on my KLR. The 700 and 244 both wear pretty quickly, but they're also very inexpensive and you can change them more often.

I didn't like the 804/805 at all. It's a great-looking square block knobby, and it works well on pavement, but off pavement I didn't think it had the side to side stability I wanted. The knobs aren't staggered, and the center blocks are pretty large, so it's very squirrelly side-to-side in the soft stuff even thought you have great propulsion. It's also somewhat expensive for a Shinko.

One detail to pay attention to is whether the tire size you're installing is a tube/tubeless type or a pure tube type. If you've converted to tubeless, then you'll need to install a tube if you're using a tire size that's tube-type; these are not safe to run tubeless. With tubeless compatible tires, you run either way depending on whether your wheel requires a tube (your '82 GS750T originally came with tubes.)

It's a mixed bag; the 705 is a tube/tubeless tire in most but not all sizes. With the 700 this varies by size, but the 5.10-17 (the size I think you'd be running on the rear) is tubeless.

700 details; some tubeless, some tube-type:
https://shinkotireusa.com/product/70...rt-tire/211928

The 244 is tube-type in all sizes:
https://shinkotireusa.com/product/24...rt-tire/211927

A few sizes of the 705 are tube-type:
https://shinkotireusa.com/product/70...rt-tire/211929

The 804/805 is a mixed bag, mostly tubeless. As I said, I wasn't impressed at all on a KLR650, but perhaps there's a size available that solves a problem for you:
https://shinkotireusa.com/product/e8...il-tire/211930


FWIW, my go-to tire for my KLR650 is the Metzeler Karoo 3; this tire looks kinda like a tractor tire or sand paddle, works great off-road, and works amazingly well on pavement, even in the wet. However, they may have stopped making it, which is typically what happens whenever I actually really like a product...

 

[Rich82GS750TZ]

Wow, Brian. Thank you for sharing your vast depth of experience, all the gory detail I didn't even know I needed. Yes, I'm running tubeless. I didn't even think to check if the 5.10-17, or any of the others were strictly for tube or tube-less.

I think I will give the 700 a try.

 

[Rich82GS750TZ]

New 700 rear is mounted. Old tire removal and new tire mounting went considerably better than the one other time I changed the front tire on this bike a while ago. I guess it does get easier each time you do it. I was so excited I forgot to balance and weight it. Oh well. Maybe I’ll pull the wheel back off Saturday or some future rainy day and balance it.

Time to go for a ride. Too nice an evening to spend wrenching in the garage.

 

[rphillips]

Hey Rich, Can you feel it needs balancing? if so a perfect time to try balancing beads & give us your thoughts of if you can tell they work...or not. May save a lot of work + great first hand info.

 

[Rich82GS750TZ]

I felt nothing odd on a pretty good run last evening, varying speeds, on and off road. Great traction in loose gravel, probably a bit better that a new 705, but my rear 705 had been getting pretty thin, so hard to judge. I actually bought a pack of weights from Cycle gear when I bought the tire. Even bought the black ones so they wouldn't be very visible. I just got ahead of myself. I will pull the wheel this weekend and balance and weight it. I am not interested in balancing beads in the least, Someone else can give that a try. I've only done a bit of research on beads, enough to know I'm not interested. I did install a 90 deg valve stem thought. Been wanting to do that for a while.

Pulling the wheel really doesn't take that much time/effort after you've done it a few times.

 

[bwringer]

I wouldn't worry about balancing that rear, at least not enough to pull it apart. You would need a ridiculous amount of imbalance to ever be able to detect it at a speed achievable by a GS.

 

[Rich82GS750TZ]

Brian, I figured as much. I pulled it this morning and balanced it anyway. Just because. I had one of my chain adjusters upside-down anyway. Couldn’t see the notch. Honestly, that was bothering me more than having mounted a non balanced wheel.

 

[Rich82GS750TZ]

Well, my cheap 90 deg valve stem proved to be a leaker, so pulled the tire off the rim again and tried a different one from the 4pack I bought. Before I even put air in it again, I had a much better thought. Why was I trusting something so important to the second cheapest thing I could find on Amazon. After work today I took it to the guy I’ve always bought my tires from. Nickname’s Fuji, possibly ‘cause he works mostly on Japanese bikes, I’ve never asked. Anyway, I explained to Fuji that I wasn’t trying to be cheap by buying the tire online, I honestly want to try to do things myself, when I can. But after fussing with this valve stem, I thought I’d better have him do this.

Even though he was busy, he offered to help me right then if I didn’t mind hanging out. We went into his shop, put the wheel on the machine, pop beads, unmount tire, he installed one of the spare 90 valve stems which he thought might be OK. But after remounting and filling the tire with air, spraying around the stem with windex, and even dunking the wheel in the creek behind the shop, determined that those stems were indeed garbage- leaked just like the one I had put on. So back on the machine, installed the straight stem I had taken out (that Fuji installed at my last tire change), filled it with air, and all good. We shot the sh!t through it all, and I thanked him profusely. Promised to always give him my tire business. He really didn’t need to do this at the end of the day, on a Friday, for me, a guy that really doesn’t bring him all that much business.

Cost to me?: $20.00
Value of his help this afternoon?: Priceless.

If you know a shop, or a guy like Fuji, treasure him.

Through all of this, I found breaking the beads to be the most sweat and swear inducing step. On my second time removing the tire from this wheel, I came up with what I think was a pretty clever and efficient method.