Modern Vespa

With my husband's retirement, we are riding a LOT more and I anticipate my rear tire, a City Grip, isn't going to last the season. Looking through past posts, is the Federal Formoza FD2 155/65R14 still considered a good option for an '08 400?

If you do go Darkside remember that just because the tire fits the rim doesn't mean it has both layers of built-in safety. I don't know if it would compromise your insurance but you'd have to-do it yourself or find a shop willing to put an incorrect tire on.

FortNine did a great (and often shared) video on the pros and cons of darkside.

Your tires are your link to the road, they are what keep you upright avoiding the dreaded roadrash or worse.

Car tires are not designed to fit onto motorcycle rims or work properly within the operational dynamics of a motorcycle.

They may "work", but why mess around with something that any vehicle dynamics engineer would tell you is dumb for the sake of a few bucks.

I am not a vehicle dynamics engineer but I did just retire after 30+ years in engineering and quality in the automotive industry, much of it spent in failure analysis, and this rings all of my "don't do it" bells.

You may get away with it but...

I know several people (from Ohio coincidentally), that do darkside and double-darkside on their big bikes and can outride me any day of the week.

The bikes behave differently on the square tires and you have to ride them different, but they work very very well once you adapt.

That Federal is the one I used when I had my darkside tire on. I only did it for the one tire, though, because I didn't get significantly more tire life than a regular tire.

The shop that mounted my tire for me said they had to use "a ton of slippery stuff" to seat the bead.

Mark

I'm with Fritz, I suppose a solid rubber (or plastic) tire might have longer life as well, but duration isn't the main thing I look for in a scooter tire.

I have rode a few scoots with a dark side rear only and no issues. typically ride in the smoke mountains so lots of curves.

here is the thing with dayside for most folks, 80% of riders never get to the deep chicken strips of a standard MC/scooter tire. they typically wear out centers of the tires. This is where the darkside tires shine though. you can get 20k or more miles out of them easily.

when corning with a DS the first few miles it is a little more push to get the scoot to lean like your use to but you quickly get up to speed and soon you can't hardly tell your pushing more.

now if your a knee dragger on a race course , yup your definitely going to notice your lap times are slower. Normal rider not so. Theres a reason 30% of gold wingers run DS and there's a bunch of OLD HD riders on vintage stuff that ride DS.

There is even scooter riders who have DS on the cannonball in the past, heck I know of 4-5 riders this year whom are DSing.