Period tires: Dunlop TT100 vs Avon Roadrunner

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L.A.B. said:
You're right, they are Roadrunners so it seems they were fitted to some late Mk3 Commandos. I stand corrected.
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Having had another look at old images of Toadrunners I think for once I could be. There's a first, lol.
 
The only Roadrunners I can find today are racing ones it seems.

Is that correct, have they been canned?
 
Raced on a Roadrunner back in the 1970s in the Avon tyres production race championship, all I can say is that unless the track temp was really hot, they would slide about all over the place-none of the championship winners on the up to 1000 cc would race on them- and neither would I but I had a tt100 on the front and a RR on the rear to pick up some money for racing on a Avon.

a pair of AM18 super venom front and back is probably your best bet if you want to use them-but whatever you do put the stickiest compound tyre on the front that you can find-you won't fall off as often!
 
Thanks for the tyre pressure info - my gauge was miles off so I now really have 30 front and 32 rear and the bike steers a lot better.
 
I set pressures by feel; recommended pressures just get you into the ball park. Depends on the context, air and road temps, high or low speeds, etc.
 
Avon Roadrunners for road are no longer listed last time I looked, if the Avon motorcycle division in Wiltshire shuts with the rest of the plant then the Roadrider will need to made elsewhere. Though it was planned to keep motorcycle tyre production in Wiltshire.

Despite the Roadrider the Roadrunner is still popular as it seemed to be used by the all year round riders and the tourists, so strange why it is no longer listed. I suspect the tyre distributors will still have stocks of Roadriders for a while.

The K81 seems to be getting more popular as well, must be those that like the originality.

Conti's Classic Attacks can be had front and rear for the Commando now, and these are also being used in racing according to the UK's conti rep, not sure in what compound though.
 
Time Warp said:
But it seems no one is using the Classic Attack, perhaps because ideally it seems you need a wider rim so not a cheap option.

Rims and spokes AU$1164.
Classic Attacks in 19 inch range from AU$229 to AU$269 each here.

Quite an expensive route down this way but am baffled why folk like FA would fit wider rims and fit the same old tyre one after the other.
Why you do that FA ? stuck in the 1970's / 1980's ? or is it all those flat straight roads in WA ? :D
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Hardly. The Roadrider is not an old tyre like the TT100. It is a modern tyre. I tried various tyre combinations before I settled on the Roadrider, When I wished to go to alloy rims, I checked the Avon website, which told me that they were made for 2.5 inch rims. So, believing what they had to say, I ordered 2.5 inch rims. My choice was questioned by the owner of the shop and the wheel builder, but, I persisted. My choice was rewarded with the finest handling motorcycle I have ever owned. Along with other mods, of course. This combo has featherlight steering as well as rock solid stability, being absolutely seamless from one lean to the other. I have been through 26 or so of these tyres and I am not prepared to try something else at this stage because I couldn't bear to have a deterioration in handling if I chose badly. Why change when you've found something that works?
 
Time Warp said:
Quite an expensive route down this way but am baffled why folk like FA would fit wider rims and fit the same old tyre one after the other.
Why you do that FA ? stuck in the 1970's / 1980's ? or is it all those flat straight roads in WA ? :D
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What’s really interesting is that several years into RoadRiders mainstream use, this rim width myth still persists!

All Ken has done, is do the job properly and fit rim widths recommended by the tyre manufacturer. They’re not ‘wider’ ... they’re correct. They’re only ‘wider’ when comparing to what was specified for entirely different tyres.

I had to go through the same persistence when I did it. Part of the wheel builders argument at CW was “look at Velocetes, they only had WMxx and they handled wonderfully”... as a customer looking to put 2013 tyres on a 1974 850 Norton and simply wanting to follow the manufacturers advice, I found this almost like a Momth Python moment!

Avon even put specific rim widths on their web site for all to see. Yet folk still miss it.

I don’t ride much in the wet these days cos I just can’t be arsed. So I can’t comment on the RoadRiders wet performance, because my wet performance is so low! But in all other regards they are fabulous tyres. I use mine on road and track and would need pretty firm, cast iron personal recomendedations before I even considered anything else.
 
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I love these black and white photo's of the factory some of you have posted, any clues where I could find more.
 
Brilliant, thanks for that Cab!

Amazing to think they were taken in 1975... some of them look like they could be from 100 years ago!

I’ll bet pictures from the factories of Honda et al from the same era would look like a different planet.
 
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I might be a bit of live in the past gook but it is incredible to think some of these people maybe put my bike together all those years ago, really nice to see these rugged down to earth people. Very nice pictures!
I wonder if any of those bikes fell of the assembly line.

Just a note on the Honda factory, I remember reading and seeing pictures of the CB 750 4 K6 production. That had been the first stop for young fresh from the Uni. Engineers whose job it was to inspire and re-engineer the new K6 lump. Appropriate were the white doctors coats they were wearing.
 
The younger ones would have already found other jobs, the older ones would have had less chance of alternative employment.
 
I hope the ones that put 4.10x19 Avon SM Mk2 on the front of mine looked suitably embarrassed. It did not steer well on downhill hairpins en route to Greece in1976.
 
kommando said:
The younger ones would have already found other jobs, the older ones would have had less chance of alternative employment.
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In union shops the ones with the least seniority (youngest ones) would be the first to go.
 
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