if i take my motorbike tire and i do this
will the tire break or not if the bike stands on the tire like this for six months will the
tire become oval or not and if this tires is five years old is it expired or it's
still good this is what i will explain you in today's videos and we're going to talk about
tires so we will see how to store the street tires the racing tires and the off-road tires
here with me i have three different types of tires which have been provided by metzeler which also
gave me all the informations about this video now here we have a metzeler m9 rr which is the tire
that i tested last year in spain we have a set of racing tires metzeler k1 or k2 i don't remember
and we have and we have a set of slick tires meant for amateurs which is called metzeler td
and you're probably wondering why do i have these three different type of tires because all the
things that i'm going to say in this video depend on which tires we're talking about the things that
are good for the street tires may not be good for the racing tires and the things that are good for
the racing tires may not be good for the td tires about the off-road tires everything we're going to
say about street tires will be the same about the off-road tires the first topic to discuss is how
to store your tires the most important thing is to keep the tires away from all the climate factors
like sunlight snow sandstorms it's not important to cover them it's not important to keep them warm
it's important to keep them away from the climate factors whether you keep them horizontal or
vertical it doesn't matter but you must keep in mind one very important thing if you keep the
tires like this in vertical everything is fine if you keep them horizontal like this everything is
fine but as long as we're talking about two three four tires nothing matters but if you pile up
like 10 tires and considering that each rear tire is about 6 kilos we're talking about that the
tire at the bottom it's holding 54 kilos of weight therefore that tire will deform now if the tire
deforms nothing bad happens because once we put it on the wheel we inflate it we warm it up it
gets back to its shape but they suggest not to do this for long time i mean if you keep them
piled up like this for few days nothing matters if you keep them piled up for months or years
they suggest not to do it i mean at this point you're saying okay but if nothing but happens
why should i care personally when we're talking about tires and we're talking about something
that costs three to four hundred percent and the tire it's what keeps the bike up which may cost
10 15 20 30 50 100 000 euros and if you crash you might get injured personally i would do everything
i can to keep the tires safe and this is true for any kind of tires if the tires are mounted
on the wheels and we keep the bike like this still in the garage standing on the tires and
if the tires are at the right pressure and we keep it like this just for a few months for example for
the winter nothing happens but if we keep the bike like this for many months or even years
that would be bad for the tires and especially in this the racing tires are more delicate than the
street tires so the road tires and the off-road tires will suffer less from this anyway in general
if we buy a couple of stands which may cost a few euros that would be the best option to keep
our bike safe if i do this there are some situations where the tire might break and i will
explain you why when the tire goes below a certain temperature the material of the compound might
crystallize like water that becomes ice so what happens it happens that if the tire crystallizes
and it gets hit it might break you might actually see some cracks along the tire this phenomenon is
called cold cracking for the street and off-road tires this temperature is actually very low
so there's no need to worry about it that's also because it happens that we use the bike
below zero during the winter in some situations maybe not the bike but the scooter
so those tires are meant to resist in those situations this is not true for the racing
tires because this temperature for these tires is around 0 degrees this is true for the racing tires
and also for the td tires and why does this happen because these tires are meant to be
used at high temperatures for example if we think about the racing tires they're meant to be used
at 80 90 100 degrees and you will never going to use a motorbike with racing tires without tire
blankets in winter with zero degrees so they're not meant to do that so this is something very
important if the racing tire or sleek tire is around zero degree or below we must be very
careful in handling it we don't have to toss it we don't have to hit it and we don't even have to put
it on and off the wheel if we need to remove the tire from the wheel and it's very cold we should
put on the tire blankets just for a few minutes just to warm it up around 10 20 degrees and then
we can take it off the wheel instead if the tire is warm i'm not talking about 10 degrees or more
we can do whatever we want if we see some cracks on the tire which means that the coal cracking
happened the tire is not going to blow up but if i was you i would never use the tire anymore
the tires new and we knew i mean the tires that have never been used do not lose performance
if they have been stored properly and this is something important because we always see people
discussing on social networks and forums saying that they will never buy at one two three years
old tire because it expired this is not true and i want to remind you that all these information have
been given to me by metzeler just to give you an example last year an italian superbike rider
won the race by using a 4 years old tire so that means considering that the level is very high that
the tire was good now how do you store the used tires if we talk about used tires there are some
important differences if we're talking about road tires or off-road tires nothing changes you can
put the bike in the garage in september with the tire at the 80 percent and when you take the bike
back out in april the tire will be at 80 percent nothing changed even if you take it back after one
or two years but this is different for the racing tires and also for the td tires if you take a used
tire and leave it there without using it it loses performance over time even if you're not using it
for example you had the track day in october using the master k1 the tire is at 80 percent you put it
in the garage and after six months the tire is at 70 for example it lost performance without using
it sometimes it may happen to see some blue spots on the tire this is due to some components of the
tire which migrate towards the outside of the tire it's nothing bad it doesn't mean the tire
is gone it just means that the tire is used and then it have been unused for a long time so when
you see those blue spots it means the tire is used and old this was about the racing tires but
it's quite different if we talk about the metzeler td tires there are some very special tires
which has been recently introduced by metzeler and they are some kind of revolution
because these are the perfect tires for diameters for a few reasons first of all they have a great
grip it's a sleek tire so it's not meant to go shopping it's meant to go riding on track
it doesn't need tire blankets and this is very important you can go riding without tire blankets
because it takes just a few corners to warm up this is not true with the racing tires remember
never use the master k1 k2 k0 without the tire blankets they're not meant to be used like that
they are super long lasting you can use them for many days having the same performance it's
reversible it means that if it's too much used in one side you can just reverse it and keep riding
this is true only for the rear tire and it doesn't lose performance if you don't use for a long time
so if the tire is used you put it away in october and you put it back in april you will find the
same performance obviously if you take it back after two three years it may have lost some
performance i'm talking about used tires okay not new tires so this is the ideal tire for the
amateurs and the reasons for me are three first of all the racing tire in every session you do it
loses performance so the amateur which needs one two three sessions to get confident with the bike
if he's using a racing tire he will lose confidence with the bike because after each
session he will find a different bike second if the tire has too much grip it's not easy to ride
it might be even more difficult one example last year in Misano once i put the super performing
tire i did the same lap time that i had with the hard tires 60 laps old and third if you keep
it for a long time without using it it doesn't lose performance now what does it mean used tire
for the raw tires and off-road tires it's clear used means you have used the bike but for the
racing tires what does it mean if you put the tire on the wheel you warm it up with the tire blanket
then the rain comes you don't ride is the tire used or not if we talk about losing performance
it counts as new so if you store it back in your garage and you take it back after one year
it didn't lose performance but if you used it even for just one lap even if you went slow it counts
as used so it will lose performance one important thing to notice is that metzeler always suggests
that at the end of the day when you go back to the pit lane after the last session and you still have
your tires warm they suggest you to cool them down putting on the tire blankets switched off so they
cool down gently this is true also if you put on the tire blankets on the new tires and you don't
ride because the rain comes the best thing to do is to unplug the tire blankets and leave the tire
cooling down for one or two hours if some dots go on the tire no problem the tire is good it will
clean once you go back on track but if some oil or fuel go on the tire it's better to throw the tire
away and never use it anymore because the oil and the fuel may react with the component of the tires
making it lose performance how do you inflate the tire sometimes you heard about nitrogen but for
the motorbike tires it's not used that's because when you are putting the tire on the wheel we
already have some air on it which contains oxygen nitrogen and all the other gases in the atmosphere
so it's impossible to inflate the tire with just nitrogen so it's not used what they use is dry air
which is the air without water another very important thing is the cap sometimes we heard
that it's not important because you can ride even without the cap on the valve that's wrong because
when the tire is spinning very fast the valve might open a little bit and lose some air that
means that after 20 or 30 minutes you might lose 0.1 0.2 bar which for the racing tires it's super
important so always put the cap on how do you put the tire on now i don't know if you've ever seen
those small weights on the wheel they are used to balance the tire and what does it mean usually
the tire is not perfectly balanced and if it's not balanced it might vibrate for example even
30 grams might make this vibrate so especially in racing sometimes it happens that in the wheel we
have the sensors so what do the best teams do first they balance the wheel then they put on
the tire and balance the wheel again in order to minimize the error so that's everything you need
to know about how storing the tires i wanted to say thank you to metzeler for having provided me
with all these super important informations and thanks to you for watching this video bye bye
you