After 13 years in the motorcycle business and having always aggressively sold tires I can't even begin to say how many tires I've sold and installed. It's definitely in the thousands.
Nor can I count how many motorcycles I've seen do exactly what that Suzuki did, some even worse. A few of them were totaled by the insurance company after the incident.
Most of them were sportbikes, the overwhelming majority in fact.
I can tell you that I've been at my current dealership since April of last year and in that time there have been four bikes go down in the very same manor. One new one in the parking lot, three that came in for new tires, one of those in the parking lot, two at the intersection just off the property. All four were sportbikes.
I just oversaw an inventory at the dealership so I can tell you that we currently have 225 tires in stock. Every single one of the street tires have a sticker on them that among other things warns that new tires are slick and that the rider should avoid steep lean angles, excessive braking and hard acceleration for a period of time. Every single one of them and they are manufacturer installed.
We have a policy in place that requires me to tell every customer I sell a new street tire to that new tires can be slick, and if the tire is installed by our service department the service manager and the tech have to do the same thing, plus it is in writing on the repair order and must be initialed by the customer.
Every tire manufacturer that I've ever spoken with has told me that they use a combination of natural oils in the rubber during the manufacturing process so that the tires will slip out of the molds easier and to give them a shelf life before installation. Heck, we've got tires on the shelf right now that you can run your fingers on and feel how slick they are. By design these oils work themselves to the surface and are worn away and evaporated during the first heat cycle.
In my own personal experience I've notice varying degrees of slickness when new tires were installed on our bike. The worst were Bridgestone Excedra's, it took more than 100miles for the bike to feel 'right' to me. The Metzler ME880's were noticeable but by the time I got the bike home from the shop they felt great. The current set of Avon's have been the best in that regard, I can't say as I noticed anything odd at all about them initially, but they had the most 'shiny' appearance when new of all I've used.
I know every dealership is different and operate in their own way, but I don't know of any that use any type of tire shine on new bikes, and only a handful on used ones. Even those guys will only put them on the sidewall. Lets be honest here, most of the set up guys are kids that aren't paid huge amounts of money, even if they were stupid enough to consider putting it on the tread do you really think they would take the time to do that? Even if they did, don't you think it would be painfully obvious because the tire would pick up loose dirt an debris on the ground and then would look worse than one that was simply cleaned.
There very well may have been something on the pavement that made our hapless 'Zuk guy drop it, but my money is on just a tad too much throttle (knowing he was on camera) on brand new tires. I've seen it waaay to many times to think otherwise.
Bruce
