voneschenbach wrote:
Not sure what you found with your Ducati, but my VStrom when new had some kind of greasy gunk all over the tires. There was something on the GTS tires too, but it was mostly cleaned up by the dealer.
The greasy gunk must have been added by the shop. Modern sport motorcycle tires are not made using mold release and don't come (from the tire factory, at least) with any sort of surface chemicals or coatings. I don't know about scooter tires. It's possible they may be coated, but I can't really imagine processes are really that different.
My dealer is having a tire special at the moment, so there are big stacks of tires around the shop. I was able to look at and feel a lot of tires (all Pirelli and Michelin) in a short amount of time. There was nothing greasy on any of them.
Watch racers: they'll leave the pits with totally new tires (occasionally with the paper stickers still on the tread!) and hit the track hard right from the start. They can do that because they use electric tire warmers.
In the absence of tire warmers, it is important to heat the tire thoroughly. It may help to "heat cycle" it to get all the various layers playing nicely with each other.
There's no point (except in racing) to ride like an idiot on new tires, but there's no Teflon on them that has to be removed by some arcane "scrubbing in" process.
The biggest issue with new tires is that... they're new. They're either on a new bike, with different characteristics from what one is used to, or they're replacements for worn tires that no longer have the same profile even if the replacements are the same model. My wife rides the same model Ducati as I do, with the same model tire. My tires have a few thousand more miles than hers. The two ostensibly identical bikes feel very noticeably different in turns just because the profiles on the once-identical tires are no longer the same.
Ask any mechanic - most say they get more comments about "it feels like a new bike" after a tire change than after hours of engine or suspension tuning.