I’ve put just over 5000 miles on my 850 V7 Stone.
The bike came with OG Dunlops which were ok when new but started tramlining once they started to wear, often quite disconcertingly. I replaced them with Pirelli Scorpion Trail 3 tyres (which came recommended) on which on which I’ve done about 500 miles but even from new the rear Pirelli has been tramlining almost as badly. NB these are Scorpion Trails whch look to be road tyres rather than the blocky Scorpion Rallys which are on / off road tyres
I have three other bikes (including a V100S) and none of them are affected to anything like the same extent by seams in the road, white lines and in particular bands of worn tarmac / old ‘resurfacing’ stone chips running lengthways along a road.
Has anyone else experienced this, and if so are there any tyres for the 850 V7 that avoid tramlining? The front wheel size in particular limits choice a bit.
Also, any general advice on avoiding tramlining? We have many great roads around here (North Yorkshire) but the condition of a lot of them isn’t great, in particular worn previous-years’ stone chip ‘resurfacing’ . Like tree rings, you can often see evidence of two or three aging stone-chipping patch-ups wearing through on the road, all of which the V7’s rear wheel seems keen to explore…
Continental TrailAttack3 are actually a road tyre which (on my v85tt) dont ‘tramline’/whiteline at all all the way down to 2mm tread.
However it is worth knowing that tight headraces can induce whitelining in almost any bike
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I Googled ‘tramlining’ and found this article…
In your case this is after a few thousand miles so could be some kind of wear? Or something loose? Possibilities (from the article) could be loose or tight head bearings, tyres at wrong pressure – if only 2 or 3 psi, either way – loose swingarm bearings, wheels misalighened, loose spokes, or even, that’s just how the road is and you have to put up with it.
From my point of view of a sidecar outfit driver, the builder told me (who is an expert), avoid using a ribbed front tyre on an outfit because it will ‘tramline’. My V7 850 Special still has the OEM front tyre that does have one central groove, but which apparently is not an issue by itself. A multi-ribbed tyre is possibly different. So maybe in your case avoid a front tyre with a pronounced rib pattern?
As an aside, the preferred approach for sidecar outfits is a somewhat soft front tyre, the way it was explained to me (by same expert) is, it kind of decouples the road surface from the forks and steering, which otherwise can become ‘twitchy’, because of the tyre following irregularities. Note however that this is a special case as it applies to the peculiar dynamics of sidecar outfits, where there are weird forces going on, that a solo bike would never experience.
Annoying huh? My possibly useless suggestion would be “Are you sure it’s the tyres?”
Makes me wonder about something being just out of alignment? Forks? Some kind of subtle ‘float’ in rear bushes? Usually more of a front wheel issue.
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My 2024 V7 Stone came fitted (from new) with Michelin Classic tyres. So far, in 3500 miles of riding, I’ve had no issues with tramlining other than on a couple of roads where any bike would do it due to the poor quality surface dressing. Even then, the tyres don’t feel sketchy and I can fairly easily move out of the worst tramline areas without any fear.
I run both tyres at 36psi as per the handbook.
As others have suggested though, it may not be the tyres. Also, are you confident in whatever tyre gauge you are using? Sometimes they can be out - worth checking with at least one other gauge, just to be sure.
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