85/15 vs road tire mileage

[joeb]

Morn all. Just a general curiosity question today. I switch between street/dirt tires and  road tires on my GS. In general, if riding only on the street, will which type of tire will give higher milage ? Reason for alternating tires is to save my " good " road tires for long rides in the twisties. The 85/15 tires seem perfectly adequate for my shorter local rides . Since I've previously run road tires exclusively I have NO idea of expected milage with combo tires. 

Just asking. 

Thanks

[dirtrider]

30 minutes ago, joeb said:

Morn all. Just a general curiosity question today. I switch between street/dirt tires and  road tires on my GS. In general, if riding only on the street, will which type of tire will give higher milage ? Reason for alternating tires is to save my " good " road tires for long rides in the twisties. The 85/15 tires seem perfectly adequate for my shorter local rides . Since I've previously run road tires exclusively I have NO idea of expected milage with combo tires. 

Just asking. 

Thanks

Morning joeb

 

Difficult to give you a full answer but typically road-only tires have longer life ALL things being equal. 

 

Road-only tires usually have more rubber & smaller sipes so there is just more rubber available contacting the road surface.

 

BUT, there are other factors involved, With (good traction) road-only tires personally I tend to ride them a lot harder & definitely brake a lot harder form speed so that increases the potential for road-only tire wear. 

 

It can also depend on the tire rubber hardness as some combination on-road/off-road tires have harder rubber & wear better than softer (mainly off-road type tires).  But in my experience the harder rubber combination on-road/off-road tires are borderline dangerous on the street for anything but clean dry roads.  

 

 

[joeb]

Thanks for your input. I agree that the variables in riding style and road conditions make the results of  direct comparisons highly suspect. I was curious as to whether the harder rubber of  combo tires would outweigh the disadvantage of tread design to give higher milage. As a side note. My Metzler Tourance tires seem to give excellent grip on dry roads . I do push them harder than a lot of riders with no issue, but as you say , only on dry clean roads but not as aggressively as I would with my road tires.