Sticky 'stones

STICKY ’STONES

EVER MET SOME GUNG-HO yo-yo who thinks he’s so fast he needs slicks on his streetbike? Well, guess what? He’s fooling himself. Most roadracing tires—even DOT-approved, race-compound “street” tires—require more heat to make them stick than even a legitimately fast rider can build up on a twisty road. Moreover, racing tires typically don’t last as long as their street-going counterparts because their treads are thin and they aren’t designed to withstand repeated heating and cooling cycles.

That’s where Bridgestone’s new BT56 SS radials come in. Unlike the company’s race-compound BT58s, which are despicably slippery at anything less than an all-out roadracing pace, the SSs are designed to perform at more realistic sportriding speeds, while offering excellent wear characteristics.

Changes from the standard, OEM-fitment BT56s are many. The SS’s silica-impregnated rubber tread utilizes Bridgestone’s Dual Aligned Compound technology, which offers the properties of a

dual-compound tire (long-wearing in the center, sticky at the edges) in one, unspliced piece of rubber. The carcass also has been changed, with the front utilizing one rayon ply instead of two nylon plies, and the rear using three Kevlar belts instead of two, plus a mono-spiral Aramid belt.

To prove the new tires’ mettle, Bridgestone invited the motorcycle press to a day of lapping Willow Springs International Raceway, whose highspeed, right-hand Turns 2 and 8 are notoriously hard on tires. And the BT56 SSs proved up to the task, offering better traction, bump absorption and stability than the standard BT56s fitted for comparison purposes. The SSs also apparently wear

well, as one set endured nearly 300 racetrack miles on a Honda CBR600F4 with little degradation in performance.

But wait a second-aren’t these BT56 SSs supposed to be street tires? Yes, indeed. So to approximate street-riding conditions, we hammered out of the pits a couple of times and found that the tires stuck well even when cold-about on par with the sporty Avons and Metzelers we’ve sampled.

The BT56 SSs are Z-rated, and are available in sizes to fit most late-model sportbikes (including the 16-inch front on Honda’s CBR900RR and the 18-inch rear on Yamaha’s FZR600) at suggested retail prices ranging from $123 to $190 apiece. -Brian Catterson