Tire wear, front vs rear.

Simply put the rear tire is usually doing more.

Plus a lot of people run equal pressures and that also makes the rear wear faster (I always run the front a few PSI lower).

Last set of tires I had to change the front was completely bald on the sides, and the rear still had siping, both were sufficiently thrashed through.

Rears last about 1/2 the mileage on dual p tires but I get about 10k out of the rears.
With dot knobs rears last at best 2-3 k and the fronts still have whiskers.
Anyone ever use a Knob on front and a dual p on the rear? It doesn't bother me at all to have the bike slide a bit at the rear on the dirt roads, but I hate the way the dual P front tires are on the marbles.
I don't ride terribly hard on the pavement, though I will say (ahem..) the strips on my rear conti tc80's right now are less the 1/4" but that may have a bit to do with getting the tire on edge during a slide.

I ride a Caponord with same size wheels as the big GS's.
In my experience, the 'streetier' the tire, the closer I get to 2 rears to 1 front.
With the knobbier options, I've been closer to equal, front and rear (though they wear differently - rear evenly, fronts with knobs getting worn more at the leading edges).

YMMV

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I tend to wear the sides off of the front tires and the middle of the rear. At least on the more powerful bikes like my KTM. I'll normally replace them both at the same time.

For some reason I'm more likely to get two rears to one front on my XR650L. I don't know why that is.

These came off of my KTM a few weeks ago:

On my 94 BMW RS, up to about 120k miles I used to get terrible front tire wear; significant cupping/scalloping, weird off center wear on the front, and about 8,000 miles to a set of tires, with the front wearing out much more than the rear. Then I replaced the long crapped out stock shocks for a set of Wilbers. Here's the results:

• I now get about 12,000 miles from a set of tires, the front almost wears out at the same time as the rear,
• Next to no cupping/scalloping at all, even at 10k to 12k miles, nice even front tire wear,
• I now run 40psi and about 42 psi rear, good grip and better wear,
• Didn't change my riding habits one bit, same roads, same loads,
• Got the same tire results with four different tire brands (all sport touring tires) over four seasons of riding.

Unique to the RS is the asymetrical (left to right) loading on the bike, a large portion of the fuel load is RH of center, driveshaft is on the RH side. This requires a minor, but constant LH grip countersteer input to maintain straight ahead. My left hand always gets more sore than my throttle hand.

I'm convinced the total lack of damping in the original stock shocks significantly impacted the front tire wear. I theorize the lack of damping caused the front tire to "flutter" up and down at a high rate. This caused a constant leading edge block wear on the front tire especially. I don't buy the road-crown/left turns/hard braking/aggressive-riding theories. Because the only two things I changed was the shocks and the tire pressures. All other factors remain the same.

Trail braking is now pretty standard practice for performance driving in cars. Brake, stop braking, and then turn was when a "sports car" meant something like an MG-B

It is trickier to trail brake to the max on motorcycles for the obvious reason of "losing the front" if you overdo it. Maybe this other guy, whose post I didn't see, wanted to be faster overall, or maybe even worse he realized he was slowing down too much and accelerating through the entire turn. Since the context of this other guy's post is not reported here, we really can't tell what his issue was. But it's not that mystifying to come up with possible scenarios.

You apparently corner rather conservatively and that is your choice, but some people would like to be faster through a corner overall.

more conservative than some, less conservative than others. can't say about the B, I owned a C.

perhaps you have some insight other than what was previously offered into my actual issue of front vs rear tire wear? although I expect all that's been fairly well covered.

Do you also accelerate conservatively? If you do heavy front braking and only gentle acceleration that would tend to preserve the rear. I always gotten two or even three times as much mileage out of a front tire as a rear tire. The more knobby the tire and the more dirt, the faster the rears wear (opposite to someone else who posted here). But I've been primarily a dirt rider, and in dirt for me the rear is frequently spinning, so it is pretty obvious why it wears out faster. Some of the dirt racers in my club change a rear tire as often as every week or two, not worn "out" (they sell them or give them away) but they are worn.

I've been riding more pavement recently than I ever have before, so perhaps now (at least on my big bike) my front & rear tires will wear more evenly. But I still ride on dirt sometimes, and still routinely spin the rear when I do. Also come to think of it, on dirt I frequently lock up the rear on braking. So all that wears the rear faster.

^^ This is my normal wear pattern as well, fronts able to go maybe 30% longer than my rears, but definitely worth changing at the same time.

The normal wear pattern on my stock Harley was a little different, however.... go figure.

I always seem to have the front tire cup before the tread is worn out. Not sure what I'm doing to cause it....played with pressure but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Must be the way I ride because I had the same issue on two different bikes. Not real issues with the rear.

When I stopped trail braking into turns, the cupping issues pretty much disappeared.

I know that it's supposed to be the best way to optimize traction on the street, but to optimize safety, I get all braking done before the corner starts, then tip the bike into the corner and get lightly on the throttle. Not only did that make the cupping issue go away, but I never found myself too hot in a corner after that either.

What you guys are refering to as cupping is the tires flexing where the treads are , similar to the way knobbies wear on the road. That's why slicks don't do this.

I had a Anakee II front with that issue... the tread wore off in a way that trashed the tire before it's time. (worn at angles that made each chunk of solid tread area uneven) that and it had strange looking bumps evenly spaced around the outside. sort of like dime sized blisters that were hard when you touched them.

Sounds like tire herpes. Where you been riding?

For me it's 2 rear to 1 front. I had a dunlop that was showing the belt after only 1000 miles. Turns out my tire guage was very inaccurate. I was over inflating right at 10 psi. With proper inflation I'm getting my money's worth out of tires now.

Same here.

Over years I had 1 front / 2 rear (CBF 600, VFR 800, ZZR 1400) but since I ride my VFR 1200 it's 1:1. My thinks the harder you ride, the more the front wears.

Not just powerful bikes, I have the same thing happen on a DL 650, it's riding style, most DL riders go 2 rear to one front.

Pete

I've gone to the darkside

so far 4 fronts and I still have 75% tread life left on my General Altimax Arctic that's on the back, I fully expect my rear tire to last 50,000+ miles. Been running Karoos up front, studded in winter, I tend to change em out soon after they hit 50% tread depth, the last 30% of legal tread life is sketchy imho. I'm running a Tourance up front now, it will probably last longer, but I will take it off for winter to run another Karoo w studs

Not everybody wants to ride like a turd or something that handles like one.

On my 950 SM, 2 rears for every 1.5 front. (Pirelli Scorpion Sync)
DRZ 400 SM I would wear them pretty evenly (Dunlop sportmax)
Bandit 1200 About 2 rear tires for every front (I don't remember what tires I ran but think it was Dunlop)