Hello from Pennsylvania!

[el cheapo]

Hi all! :cool: Wow, I never thought I would find anyone else who would admit to liking a small bike! I acquired my 2003 GZ250 from a friend of mine, and at the time it had 1073 miles on it. I rode it all last summer (2009), and now it has just short of 10k miles. I got a small windshield from JC Whitney for $89.00, and put a K&N air filter in it, but other than that it's stock. There are two gas stations in my area that sell gas without ethanol, and I use this in my bike exclusively. I find that most of the time I get 81-82 mpg, but on an extended trip it drops to around 73 mpg. I attribute this to running the small motor at 60-70 miles per hour. Anyway, I am due for a new rear tire. My buddy got the bike for his son to learn on, and I'm guessing he wasted some of the tread. Can anybody recommend a good rear tire? Thanks for your time!

[alanmcorcoran]

El cheapo, use the search feature, but the short version is, you might need to be flexible. Many of the tire threads comment on the difficulty in locating the stock tires and it seems most tire seekers have found equivalents. seven years is a long time to go on one set of tires so I guess the good news is you got your money's worth out of it. Check the front one for cracks, hardening and such.

[mrlmd1]

If the front is original equipment, 7 years old, even if it has tread, replace it. The rubber gets hard and brittle and loses its grip on the road which is not safe.
If you can find Cheng Shins in the right size, they are good tires. Like AC said, do a search on here, there are lots of threads about tires.

[el cheapo]

Thanks for the info! I looked at my front tire and I can't see anything wrong with it. In fact, it looks brand new to me. I called my local motorcycle shop (Cumberland Kawasaki in Carlisle, PA). He said he could get Dunlops or Pirelli's for the same money. From the reviews I read, the Pirelli looks like the better tire. I'll do a little more research though. I can't ride it for a couple more months anyway.

[burkbuilds]

You can find the manufactue date using the numbers on the tire. I don't remember how to do this but it's on a thread somewhere or maybe someone will chime in and tell us again. If the front tire is not newer than seven years I agree with everyone else who recommended replacement. It isn't worth going down over the cost of a tire and they do "wear out" in ways that aren't always visible to the naked eye after that many years. As for replacements, I was able to find the Metzler's on-line and have them shipped in and a local shop mounted and balanced them for me, but that's been almost a year ago and they are difficult to find. I only got about 8 thousand out of my rear tire and just under 12 thousand out of the front, so if you've gotten 11,000 miles out of them you've done well.

Oh, yeah, welcome to the forum el cheapo, glad to have you here.

[mrlmd1]

The tire date stamp is imprinted in the rubber on the sidewall of the tire in a rectangular box, with the month and year of manufacture. Go watch this video posted by another member, dhgeyer. .

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897

There is a great amount of discussion on here about different tires, pros and cons of different brands. Read them if you want, buy what you want. If they are old, replace them no matter what they look like.

[el cheapo]

Wow! Powerful video. Maybe I will get a new front!

[burkbuilds]

mrlmd1, thanks for posting that video, I went out to the shop to check out the tires I just bought mail order and they were good, made in 09, but I had not considered that anyone would be selling "new tires" that were really very old tires before I watched the video. Thanks again, peace of mind is worth a lot.