Comparison of
Avon Azaro AV45 / AV46 to Michelin Pilot Sports
on a Ducati ST4s
From the first day I removed the stock Michelin
Pilot Sports and installed the
AV45/46 ST's the tires provided more feedback and the bike felt more secure,
more planted and more consistent
under varying conditions.
This in turn
made me feel more confident and more relaxed when the pace quickened.
Additionally, they seem to need very little warm-up
to provide excellent
traction.
When the pavement gets rough and irregular with patches and
expansion joints these tires just get better. They seem to be able to absorb
all types of irregularities without batting
an eye, especially when l leaned over.
The Avons talk to me much more than the Pilot Sports. The Pilot Sports are
great tires when they are warmed up and ridden on
clean, smooth pavement.
They feel like they are glued to the road and would never let go. But, in places
where the road has sand, water and oil, slick
lane markers or pavement
irregularities like ridges
and seams, they would let go without much warning,
especially so if the tires had not had enough time
or speed
to build some heat.
This is unsettling and could easily lead to a highside, particularly since they
are capable of hooking up quite suddenly. The Avons
handle these difficult
conditions with much more poise.
They seem to be less affected by sandy
pavement, lane markers and oil and when they do start to slide they tend to
do it more gradually, not
all at once. They also hook back up more gradually
making it much easier to recover and this helps avoid the dreaded highside.
The Avons have wide, deep grooves that extend
to within 1/2" of the edge of
the tread which do more than just channel water away from the contact patch.
I feel they make the tire much more forgiving
when leaned over
and much less
likely
to throw the rider into a high-side should they encounter a spot of
reduced traction such as a patch of sand or oil or a sharp dip in
the road.
These
grooves help the tire regain traction gradually which will be much
appreciated should you momentarily lose traction. They also provide
the rider
with
more feedback
when the tire is nearing it's normal traction limits by
gradually starting to walk to the outside of the turn rather than abruptly
letting go all at once. These
qualities help reduce demand on the rider as well
as on
the suspension, making for a wider "sweet spot" when adjusting the
various suspension controls.
The Avons provide more tactile feedback from
the road surface while
simultaneously creating a smoother, silkier ride. I know it sounds like a
contradiction and I can't fully explain it but that's what
I've experienced. In
a
corner at moderately
high lean angles, both tires feel glued to the road but
the Avons make the bike feel like it's on rails while the Pilot Sports have a little
nebulous squirm to them
which reduces confidence and hinders
my ability to
feel
the interaction between rubber and pavement. At even higher lean angles
on clean dry pavement the Avons still inspire confidence but they
become a
little
loose, not in a scary way, they have
a predictable 'walk' to the outside of
the turn, even front and back so it does not feel squirmy or unsettling. The
Michelins offer less 'walk'
to the outside of the turn but do not exactly feel
planted, they feel a little squirmy until you load up the rear with a moderate
amount of acceleration. It feels
like the Michelins allow a
high horsepower
bike to launch out of corners earlier and harder but the Avons are still quite
good in this respect. The Avons help me carry
more speed through the corner
because they offer a superior feel of the road surface and the interaction
between rubber and pavement.
There is a concrete rain control ridge between
my driveway and the street
about 2" high. I usually drive over it about 15 or 20 mph while leaned over a
little bit to make the corner. The
Michelin front would always feel harsh while
going over this, like I was going
to bend the rim and it would cause my line to
change slightly. The Avon goes over it like silk without upsetting my line at
all. I experimented with
pressures between 32 psi and 38 psi
with the
Michelins, the higher the pressure the harsher the ride. I run the Avons at 38 F
40 R except fully loaded for higher speeds I
use 1-2 lbs. more. I don't know
that the Michelins offer less rim protection but that is my impression. It seems
to me the Avons may offer more protection
(say if I hit a 2x4 that is kicked up
in front of
me on the freeway) because they work well at higher pressures and
feel better when
hitting sharp bumps.
In my experience, the Avons offer more traction before they
are warmed up or
on
cool days when you are caught in
slower moving traffic that can make it
difficult to bring the tires up to temperature. I found that riding the Michelins
at 65 mph on the highway on a 45
degree day was not enough to warm them
up. It was
necessary to take some corners and do a lot of braking and
accelerating, etc. This resulted in tires
that were often
cold and didn't offer
as much traction for emergency stopping or turning as the Avons under the
same conditions.
It does seem the performance of the Avons falls off pretty rapidly
at really
cold
temperatures (somewhere below 40F
or so). The Michelins do this also
but I haven't ridden enough at low temperatures to be able to make a direct
comparison.
One trip I rode really hard on really rough, abrasive and hot pavement
that
was covered
with "tar snakes",
strips of road sealing tar that becomes slippery
and goey on hot days causing the bike to slide around
a lot. The
Avons
handled
the tar snakes better than other tires in the group, probably because
they hook back up more gradually than the rest and offer better
road feel. They
were
very confidence inspiring under this most
difficult challenge. However,
I think I built too much heat in the tires because of the extreme conditions,
hard riding, etc. and this may have
been compounded by low air pressure.
I may have been a couple of lbs. low when I started because the next morning
they measured about 5 lbs. low.
While the tires felt fine at the lower
pressure,
I think the heat of the day coupled with all the continuous tar-snake scrubbing
cooked the rubber compound. I don't
think the tires offered quite as much
traction after that, particularly noticed in the cold, but their performance was
still acceptable. Moral of
the story? Don't let the pressure get too low,
especially if you have a heavy load and will be riding really hard on hot
pavement in order to avoid
cooking the rubber. The
Avons like a higher
pressure
than the Michelins. Actually, I think those tar snakes allowed the tire
temps to reach the sort of temps a tire would see on the track because
the
road was
full of 75-95 mph corners (not
really any straights) and every time
my tires would go over a hot, goey tar snake it would slide about 6"
(the width
of the snakes) before it even began
to hook up. The tires were sliding much
of the day because the tar snakes were everywhere. That can build a lot of
heat.
And this brings up one reason why I don't think running different
compounds
front
and rear is necessarily beneficial
but actually offers some downside. One
reason the tar snakes were not upsetting the handling of my bike too much
(besides it's excellent suspension) was because
the front and rear tires were
behaving
similarly, ie., if the front tire was displaced 9" before it regained
traction, so did the rear. Imagine
the handful you
would have if the front tire
was hooking up in only 7" while the rear was sliding 9". This same concept
applies under other slide conditions also. Any
patch of reduced traction
becomes more problematic if the rear tire is displaced more than the front
because then you are pointed the wrong way when
you hook back up. The
tire and motorcycle manufacturers
know what they are doing when they equip
a bike with matched tire pairs. Furthermore, sport compounds generally take
longer and are harder to heat
up than more street based
tires. Because the
front tire is slower to warm up in normal riding and since it is responsible for
80+% of your emergency straight line braking, it
is extra important that it not
be made of a compound that doesn't work well until it's warmed up. After all,
when sport riding in the twisties you
can wait for some heat to build before
pushing the tire to it's edge
but, in traffic you never know when you will need
to suddenly avoid a cell-phone talking cager. Does it make sense to run a
front tire that offers poor traction
until it's warmed up? In my experience,
sport
compounds actually
have less traction than tires one step down the ladder
until they reach design temperature. If they reach design temperature the
equation is reversed but it may
not be noticed as much because,
when warm,
either
type of tire will produce enough traction to lift the rear off the ground
for emergency stopping. In other words, when both types of tires are warmed
up, the sport compound will
not stop
the bike appreciable faster than the
sport-touring compound because the stopping in both instances is limited
by rear wheel lift.
I consider a tire worn out when the tread is worn to the wear
bars (or nearly so)
or
has changed shape enough
to significantly affect handling. My Avons
appear to wear out about the same time front and rear, the rear hitting the wear
bars in the center almost the
same time the front tire hits the wear bars halfway
out to the edge of the tread. The Michelins lasted about 3500 miles in
temperatures of 45F to 65F before
the rear hit the wear bars
and the tire was
very
squared off at this point but the front could have continued on. My last
two sets of Avons have provided around 5500 miles each set,
under warmer
and
more abrasive conditions than the
Michelins saw. Taking the different
conditions into account I would say the Avons lasted roughly twice as long
as the Michelin Pilot Sports and the rears
were not nearly as squared off when
they hit the wear bars. But I would use the Avons over the Michelins even if
they both lasted the same simply
because the Avons work so well under the
wide range of conditions encountered on public roads. I know plenty of
Ducati riders who have tried the Avons and
not one of them was disappointed
with their decision so you really don't have much to lose.
Tire technology has advanced by leaps and bounds over the last 20 years but,
unfortunately, much of the
development expertise has been put into designing
tires that work well on the track. Even the street versions of many popular tires
are biased to track like conditions.
I would put the Michelin Pilot Sports in this
category. The
Avon AV 45/46 ST are ideally suited to sporty riding on public
roads and come with the durability to make them a practical choice.
Mike Mullen
(To go to Mike's website look at the blue column on the right and
click on
'Links
& Videos'See: DUCATI OWNER'S HOME PAGES; Mike's Ducati 'Views &
Reviews')
Editors Note: Mike's review of Avon Vs. Michelin is still valid today because
some riders still opt for the
Michelin Pilot Sports and have not heard the word
about the superiority of Avons. Michelin however has not stood still, releasing
the Michelin Pilot Power tires
which are thought to be a big improvement over
the Michelin Pilot Sports.
After using the Michelin Pilot Sports that came stock on my first Ducati ST4,
a 2001 bike, I replaced them
with the Avon Azaro ST's having read Mike's
review on his website. I put 13,000 miles on that bike, replacing the Michelins
with 2 pairs of the Avons. After
eight months I bought a new 2004 Ducati ST4S
and replaced the stock Michelin's (right out of the box) with Avon Azaro ST's
I took those new stock Michelins
off the 2004 bike and put them on the 2001
bike. I could have just used the new bike with the stock Michelins, but why
would I ride with Michelins when I
could use the far superior Avons, saving
money at the cost of my riding experience, not to mention the safety factor
didn't appeal to me. I also felt
the 2001 bike would be more appealing to
potential buyers, with new rubber. I made the right choice. I rode with the Avon
Azaro ST tires for 2 years, (5000
to 8000 miles each pair). An Avon
representative suggested that I might want to try the Avon Viper Sport tires.
I did try them and they were
great. The Viper line of tires have been updated
and are now called:VP2 Sport. Although I loved my Viper's and think I had
found perfection, I still wanted
to try the Storm-ST tires because every new set
of Avon's impresses me with the 'state of the art' technology that they keep
coming up with. Although I did
love the way the handled, I was ready to
replace theVipers with the new Storm-ST tires. I used the Storm-ST tires
starting in 2007 thru Spring
2011. Now that Avon has updated the Storm-ST
with the Storm 2 Ultra, I will be testing them, starting with a new
rear tire.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I loved the Avon Storm-ST tires which I ran on my 2004 Ducati
ST4S. These are
the
best tires you can find for a Sport Touring bike. They were steady and
reliable. I always felt safe. I know a good thing when
I find it. I'm sticking with
the Storm tires.
Avon has introduced a new evolution design to the Storm tires, the new Storm
2 Ultra. Technology marches on and
Avon is quick to apply it, wherever and
whenever they can. Who says the best can't continue to get better and better?
Below you will find text from Avon's Website
on their new Sport Touring,
Storm 2 Ultra Tires.
(My review is coming soon).
