[Scattcatt]

Alright, got done putting roughly 40 or so miles on them late last night, these were the initial observations that I had:

1) The tires turned SO smoothly on the carpet in the garage.

I imagine this is largely due to the fact that these tires still rounded as opposed to flattened off in the centers after thousands of miles of mostly straight up and down commuting. However, none of the BT003RS's that I've had in the past on any of the sets ever felt like this, these just spun like butter on the ground.

2) The tires felt far more unstable in a straight line than the BT003RS's

Now depending who you are, this may be a good thing, a bad thing, or something you don't even notice at all depending on the tire you are coming from. I was caught completely by surprise by how unstable the tires felt. It felt like riding a bicycle at slow speed, constantly having to track the front tire to stay upright. I would have thought that the BT's would have done this more as they are more of a race tire, to me that would scream that they love to dive into the corners but they simply didn't, not like these Pilot Street Radials.

Initiating any turn was a thousandfold times easier than on the BT's, not that they were hard at all. If anything, it felt like you have to force the bike to stop diving deeper into the turns rather than the bike staying stable at a specific lean angle or maybe even wanting to straighten up slightly with the BT's.

This could be contributed to a couple of things, first, I have originally been on a 140 rear since day 1 with this bike. The BT's do not come in a 130 so I've been forced to use the 140 for the past 30,000 miles. To my understanding this takes away some of that God-given "flickability" that this bike is so highly praised for. That is perhaps exactly what I experienced.

The second thing of course naturally could be just the tire design.

In any case, I was caught completely off guard by this consistent yearning of the bike to just dive every which way and having to fight it almost to go straight. The winds yesterday did not help at all. On the BT's I've ridden in winds as high as 70-80 mph gusts (not recommended anyway) but I managed okay. With the Pilots, I found myself blowing across the road with 30 mph gusts yesterday.

3) The tires felt pretty sticky right out of the gate. I know they say not to ride hard on new tires for the first 100 miles and blah blah blah... I normally don't care. I find it more of a thing for the manufacturers to cover themselves from lawsuits if something "happened" to get on the tire. I don't go dragging knee or anything on the tires when I first get them or anything, but I sure don't drive them like a granny. Hard acceleration (with what the bike can put out at least) and hard braking all day and these stuck like champs. I at no point felt like the tires were inadequate with grip.

4) The tires seemed to be stiffer on the road, if only slightly. They didn't seem to soak up quite as much road imperfections as the BT's but it was so slight that really this is nit picky. Not that it bothered me at all, it was just something that I noted.

Make no mistake, my intentions are not to slam the Pilots in any way, these were simply my first ride observations. I suspect that once I get used to the handling characteristics of these tires, especially that diving ability, I will come to love them. For now I'm maintaining a neutral outlook on the tire.

If you have any other questions on the tires that I failed to cover here feel free to ask.