JIM WALSH: CONTIMOTION TYRES
"Can you pass a Motion at this price?"
What the?
It's funny what catches your eye when you're staggering around aimlessly in one of your favourite bike shops and that piece of genius copy certainly managed to pierce the cloud of confused indecision when confronted by a wall or two of motorcycle related gear.
What made it doubly surprising is that it came from Richard Lawrence, late of Darbi Accessories Ltd in Petone and now Parts Manager at TSS Motorcycles in Alicetown, Lower Hutt. He's quietly spoken, affable, incredibly helpful, and one of those "all round nice guys" except he's not because he's tall and thin.
A closer read revealed that Continental Tyres are in the midst of promoting their Sport Touring tyre, the aforementioned "Motion" (actually ContiMotion), and were selling sets at $380 a pair! Given that I had just chewed about 3 months worth of wear out of my previous set of tyres in one weekend on the South Island's barely used and quite coarse roads I had been checking out a variety of tyre reviews and asking the opinion of people I know who ride sort of like me.
There's a myriad of options available in the "standard biggish to large bike" tyre sizes of 120/70x17 front and 180/55x17 rear in the correct load and speed ratings for my '05 Kawasaki Z750S. Everything from semi-slick to mileage-plus-heavy-load oriented touring tyres. In fact there's so much choice that it's easy to forget to factor issues like wear characteristics, mileage, and price vs. performance into the decision . That can sometimes mean buying something not relevant for the majority of your riding, and putting up with less than optimum performance day to day, just so you can hang it all out on that few and far between perfect Sunday afternoon. To add to the confusion, it's pretty difficult to try before you buy.
Rather than confuse myself further, I decided to simply trust Richard and order a set. Once I discovered that a good mate who'd been using Continental Road Attacks for years had switched to ContiMotions I was quite content that I'd made the right choice.
It always rains when you get new tyres, right? Something I've found over time is that if a tyre can be persuaded to shed release agent on a cold wet road, we're going to get on fine. Tick that one off for the ContiMotions, especially gently slithering my way home successfully
Thankfully the weather cleared up rather quickly and my scrub in ride to Toppy's Cafe in Martinborough couldn't have been better. First impressions were of a quick but neutral steering front with a very precise "set" to a given angle of lean. Once in a turn, no effort is required to maintain the selected turn radius.
Motorway riding revealed a much improved quality of ride over the previous Sports oriented tyres I had fitted to the Z750, which were all about transmitting every last skerrick of feedback to the rider. Great if you're on your ear and giving it some welly. A little unnerving at times when droning along urban roads.
Hitting the Rimutaka Hill road revealed another delightful feature of the ContiMotion tyre. The carcass of the front tyre acts in concert with the rather basic front suspension of the Z750 rather than forcing it to react to every bump and gouge in the road surface like a stiff-walled sports oriented tyre can. Braking on rippled corner entries can provoke an "out of sync" feeling from the front end, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the less stiff construction of the ContiMotion front allowed the suspension and tyre to track the road surface rather than jarring and "hanging in air" sensation I used to experience from the front end. Bear in mind that we're talking about changing from a sports tyre designed to be tortured to a sports touring tyre designed to cover a range of compromises and change in feel makes sense.
From talking to other riders using the ContiMotion tyre I knew that I wouldn't see the "furring" or "balling" on the edge of the tread after a spirited ride that you can expect from nominally "stickier" rubber, but I was surprised at how well the Motions did stick on the way home, after they'd been scrubbed in. I aimed at potholes and surface irregularities, braked late and hard, got on the gas earlier than normal, anything to see if I could find inconsistent responses or a propensity to break loose under provocation.
They may not be a track tyre, but for a Sports Tourer owner, especially in the budget end of the spectrum, you'd be hard pressed to find a tyre with such an inherent blend of stability, precision, light steering and an almost "buttery" ride. All that and supreme value too. To be honest I was nervous about moving away from brands that I've trusted and travelling deeper into the sports touring tyre range, but a few hundred kilometers over mixed road conditions and I can stop justifying my choice on price alone.