How to slice a tyre with a can
Mechanic Kevin Hollingsworth says that mates don’t always know best
This pristine Yamaha XT660 needed a new tyre, even though it had only covered a few hundred miles. The owner hadn’t been going crazy with burnouts, so the mechanics at Doncaster Motorcycles were left a little baffled by the battered rubber. Spannerman Kevin Hollingsworth picks up the story: “The guy had bought himself a lovely set of aftermarket cans, but because he
‘He’d been burning rubber but not in a good way’
isn’t that confident with spanners he asked his friend to fit them.
“But as Stoner once said to Rossi ‘the ambition outweighed the talent’ and he didn’t bother reading the instructions, so he left out a couple of spacers and simply bolted the cans to the subframe – and that meant a critical loss of clearance.” When Kev removed the tyre, there was very little rubber left on the edge of the now much smaller contact patch and before long it would have worn through to the carcass itself.
“It was like a carving knife had been at it. He was lucky it didn’t go pop while he was riding around,” Kev continued.
“In his defence, the tyre cleared the pipes when the bike was up on a stand. The suspension was on standard settings, which is fine for a 13-stone rider, but this lad was 18 stone so the suspension compressed enough to get the tyre rubbing on the silencer.
“I couldn’t believe the rider couldn’t smell the burning rubber or hear the tyre dragging on the exhaust, but he said he hadn’t noticed anything untoward and had carried on burning rubber – and not in a good way.”
A new Metzeler Roadtec came in at £140 fitted and with the spacers fitted, the exhaust was safe. “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Kevin concluded.