Choosing the right bike tyre Tubetype or Tubeless Tyre

Choosing the right bike tyre Tubetype or Tubeless Tyre

choosing the right bike tyre

Size matters

The tyre you choose should fit the appropriate rim size. Using tyres that are way wider than the befitting size would surely give you more grip, but they are not necessarily better. It could result in lesser agility along with acceleration and suspension duties being hampered.

5 Basic Tips For Buying A Motorcycle Tyre 5 Basic Tips For Buying A Motorcycle Tyre

Choosing the right tyre for your motorcycle is a must!

Riding motorcycles is one joyous and adrenaline pumping exercise. However, unlike cars, motorcycles are single-track vehicles, and because of this very reason, they’re being tagged as outright ‘dangerous’ by the wise and the sense of the world. Their logic is simple and quite rational if you give it a thought. For instance, if you make a mistake while riding a motorcycle, odds are that you’re likely to get hurt badly. There could be many reasons for a crash/accident, however, on several occasions, it has been seen that motorcyclists meet with undeserved fate just because of some fault in the running components of a motorcycle. Tyres, for example, are one among them!

In order to ensure that your motorcycle always stays on the road with its rubber side down, it’s very important for you to keep that ‘rubber’ in good nick. And most importantly, you should be able enough to differentiate between different types of tyres while purchasing one for your motorcycle. For they are your motorcycle’s only contact patch with the road.

MRF LT 155 D12 SAVARI N8 88/86K 8PR Tube Tyre

MRF LT 155 D12 SAVARI N8 88/86K 8PR Tube Tyre

BrandMRF
Section Width155 Millimetres
Load Index Rating88
MaterialRubber
Tyre Aspect Ratio0.8

About this item

  • Vehicle Compatibility: Tata Ace Magic, Tata Ace HT / Mahindra Maxximo (Load Vehicle), Force Trump 15, Mahindra Jeeta
  • All wheel fitment (front and rear)
  • Higher land-to-sea ratio
  • 5-rib thread pattern
  • Increased load capacity and excellent mileage

Which tyre is best – with tube or without tube?

I would like to introduce two more factors here to answer this as objectively as possible – alloy wheels and terrain, more specifically, in off road usage.

For typical urban terrain use, tubeless Tyres are more popular because of the sheer convenience they offer, albeit at a slight premium. Especially when you start dabbling with alloy wheels.

They can be a lifesaver in high speed, pressure failure situations, more so for two-wheelers.

The only issue is that with each puncture, their speed rating and hence the safety keeps reducing and ideally the tyre has to be discarded after just one or two punctures.

Tyres with internal tubes on the other hand deliver an equal perfomance at a lower cost for urban use on Tarmac. However the option of playing around with different alloy wheel designs is very limited. Also, If you consider off road usage, they are superior to tubeless Tyres, especially for motorbikes with spoked wheels.

Spoked wheels are stronger and can withstand rough usage compared to alloy wheels. More importantly Tyres with tubes are more forgiving of punctures in such a situation.

I need to change my car tyres. Which should I opt for, Bridgestone, Michelin, or MRF, and why?

As an Engineer who has worked in MRF Tyres R&D for a few years, I would like to inform you that if you are an Indian customer, then any of the above mentioned brands will be fine. Most of the tyres sold by the big giants of the tyre industry are the ones which are made exclusively for South Asian markets (because of the similarity of the road conditions). Coming to Indian brands, they too make tyres which can perform very well on Indian roads and won’t lag much behind their foreign competitors in terms of performance (for e.g. most of the car companies in India source their tyres from local tyre companies without compromising on their vehicle’s performance). So, in the end it doesn’t make much of a difference when it comes to performance but it does when it comes to price, servicing, replacement guarantee, etc.

*Note: There are still some premium low aspect ratio tyres (fancy tyres) sold by Michelin, Bridgestone, Pirelli, etc. But you should be careful while buying those as they can affect the vehicle dynamics. The stock tyres of your car are meant to give your vehicle optimum performance in terms of fuel efficiency, ride comfort, handling and safety. So choose carefully next time when you want to give your car that “Fast and Furious” look. 🙂

Hope this answer helps.

Mohan Das, former Executive R&D at MRF Tyres (2010-2013)