Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128165
Dunlop D208ZR --- 0207ZR ••••• 0208 GP -0208ZR REAR TIRE PROALES Catalunya circuit in Spain a few months back, J faced various tire issues all day. The OEM-specification Dunlop tires fitted to the stock bike were sliding quite a bit. The OEM version is labeled the D208L and is a completely different tire than the D208ZR. Just for the record, the D208ZR works very well on the R1 and is considerably better than the OEM version. The tires would only spin under hard acceleration on occasion. Any criticisms I could have for the tires on the racetrack would be completely unfair because the tires were that impressive. The truth of the matter is that the level of torture we threw at the tires on the track will never be reached on the street. As a matter of fact, many of the bikes never had to have the tires changed throughout the course of the entire track day. Some of them, in fact, even showed up on our street ride with plenty of tread left on them for that element of the test. STREET RIDE IMPRESSION I've already raved about the tires on the track, and if the tires performed that well on the track, it was only going to get better on the street, right? Naturally, my opinions are based on the few bikes on which I had a chance to sample the tires. Over the course of two days, I rode a variety of bikes on our street rides, including Kawasaki's ZX-12R and ZZR1200, and a Honda CBR600F4i. Our small group did everything from the infamous Deal's Gap, to miserable freeway droning in Tennessee in 98-degree heat. One thing came to mind on all three bikes; the D208ZR is more than enough tire for everyday riding and spirited canyon carving, and that includes the mighty ZX-12R with its 165 rear-wheel horsepower. Feel and compliance were very good on the freeway, with the freeway expansion joints and grooves causing nothing in the way of instability. Now, as far as the tight and twisty confines of Deal's Gap were concerned, they performed great. I was riding the Kawasaki ZZR 1200 on that day and was perfectly happy with the tires. It wasn't much of a torture test, however, because the entire road from the Tennessee state line to the North Carolina state line had been freshly paved. Damn are you people lucky! Turn-in and side grip were excellent on the street. The front profile allowed the bike to transition from side to side quickly, but in a linear fashion. Once there, they seemed glued to the road. No grip issues at all, front or rear. The new D208ZR should be an excellent choice for any sportbike owner trying to find a tire with excellent durability, grip, and value. eN These three tires are the bread and butter of Dunlop's sport tire range. Riding A Supersport Contender Not that it has that much to do with tires - although it was a good back-to-back comparison between the D208ZR and the D208GPs - I got the opportunity to ride three AMA Supersport bikes at VIR and it was defmitely one of the coolest things I've ever been able to do working at a magazine. I rode Tommy Hayden's Kawasaki ZX-6R (actually the display bike), Damon Buckmaster's Yamaha YZF-R6, and Mike Hale's CBR600F4i. The latter two were the real McCoys; they were Bucky and Hale's back-up bikes. I rode Hayden's bike first and spent the first four laps trying to remember to shift the thing the wrong way (or in this case his right way; reverse shift, as on all three bikes). The bike, as I mentioned, was the display bike - I knew this because there was no way that Tommy's suspension could be so poorly set up, and there was no way that it could be that slow. But it looked the part. When I hit the front straight on Hale's bike for the first time, I got my first true taste of what a Supersport bike feels like. "Damn, this is fast," is the first thing I thought to myself halfway to tum one. One thing of note: VIR's front straight isn't straight. It actually has a kink in it two-thirds of the way down. Hale told me that he discovered this by going down the front straight at full throttle, and not being aware of the kink on his first-ever lap of the track. He almost ran off the track as it forced him wide. On a stock 600, the kink isn't much of an issue, but on an Open-dass bike or a "real" Supersport bike, you'd better be on the proper llne because you are flying. The next thing that impressed me was how perfect the suspension was. It was really stiff, but really compliant at the same time. One thing that I noticed immediately on all three bikes was the amount of rear ride height these guys run to get the bikes to tum· they are really jacked up. In height, not quality. My favorite of the three bikes was Bucky's R6. I think the ergonomics fit me better than the other two bikes, and the scream of 14,OOO-plus rpms of the race motor is addic· tive. By this point, I was shifting the wrong way (reverse shift, again), but not having to use all of my concentration on just that. It would suck to blow one of their motors, or highside from a downshift that was supposed to be an upshift. I was really impressed by the factory R6's excellent suspension through the rough esses section of the track. The intoxicating motor didn't have the mid-range grunt of the Honda, but once the tach started creeping toward redllne, it came to life like a waking monster. It's truly amazing that they can extract this much power from 600cc of displacement. The next most impressive thing was the bike's braking capabilities and the feel of those brakes. The R6 had the most perfect master·cylinder ratio I've ever felt, combined with their excellent stopping power, getting the bike hauied down from speed was a piece of cake. Throw Dunlop's D208GP race rubber into the mix on all three bikes (with way more grip than I was wiJling to use on their bikes), and you have astonishing performance capa· bilities. I rode the bikes fairly conservatively - because the last thing I needed to do was to be the idiot who chucked ooe down the road· but I got a true feel for what the bikes are capable of in more talented hands. I can't thank the teams and Dunlop enough for giving me the opportunity to take their bikes for a spin. Sport DZil8Gl' 52 JULY 31,2002' D220ST cue I e n .. _ so This is a list of the sizes currently available and Dunlop's suggested retail prices, which may vary from dealer to dealer. 130j70ZR16 D208F $73.96 120j60ZR17 D208F ........•..................$73.96 120j70ZR17 ............•••......D208F $76.15 160j60ZR17 " D208 $91.37 170j60ZR17 ....••••...•..........D208 ......••...................$93.64 180j55ZR17 ...............•. , D208 ...............•••.........$97.91 0208 $114.14 190j50ZRI7 0208 $129.21 200j50ZR17 Contact your local dealer, or go to www.dunlopmotorcyde.com. for more information.