Front Avon AV45 ST
Rear Avon AV46 ST
Rear Avon AV46 ST
Comparison of Avon AV45/46 to Michelin Pilot Sports on a Ducati ST4s.
From the first day I removed the stock Michelin Pilot Sports and installed the AV45/46
ST's the tires provided more feedback and the bike felt more secure, more planted and
more consistent under varying conditions. This in turn made me feel more confident and
more relaxed when the pace quickened. Additionally, they seem to need very little warm-up
to provide excellent traction. When the pavement gets rough and irregular with patches and
expansion joints these tires just get better. They seem to be able to absorb all types of
irregularities without batting an eye, especially when leaned over.
The Avons talk to me much more than the Pilot Sports. The Pilot Sports are great tires when
they are warmed up and riden on clean, smooth pavement. They feel like they are glued to
the road and would never let go. But, in places where the road has sand, water and oil, slick
lane markers or pavement irregularities like ridges and seams, they would let go without
much warning, especially so if the tires had not had enough time or speed to build some heat.
This is unsettling and could easily lead to a highside, particularly since they are capable of
hooking up quite suddenly. The Avons handle these difficult conditions with much more poise.
They seem to be less affected by sandy pavement, lane markers and oil and when they do
start to slide they tend to do it more gradually, not all at once. They also hook back up more
gradually making it much easier to recover and this helps avoid the dreaded highside.
The Avons have wide, deep grooves that extend to within 1/2" of the edge of the tread which
do more than just channel water away from the contact patch. I feel they make the tire much
more forgiving when leaned over and much less likely to throw the rider into a high-side
should they encounter a spot of reduced traction such as a patch of sand or oil or a sharp
dip in the road. These grooves help the tire regain traction gradually which will be much
appreciated should you momentarily lose traction. They also provide the rider with more
feedback when the tire is nearing it's normal traction limits by gradually starting to walk to
the outside of the turn rather than abruptly letting go all at once. These qualities help reduce
demand on the rider as well as on the suspension, making for a wider "sweet spot" when
adjusting the various suspension controls.
The Avons provide more tactile feedback from the road surface while simultaneously
creating a smoother, silkier ride. I know it sounds like a contradiction and I can't fully
explain it but that's what I've experienced. In a corner at moderately high lean angles,
both tires feel glued to the road but the Avons make the bike feel like it's on rails while the
Pilot Sports have a little nebulous squirm to them which reduces confidence and hinders my
ability to feel the interaction between rubber and pavement. At even higher lean angles on
clean dry pavement the Avons still inspire confidence but they become a little loose, not in a
scary way, they have a predictable 'walk' to the outside of the turn, even front and back so it
does not feel squirmy or unsettling. The Michelins offer less 'walk' to the outside of the turn
but do not exactly feel planted, they feel a little squirmy until you load up the rear with a
moderate amount of acceleration. It feels like the Michelins allow a high horsepower bike to
launch out of corners earlier and harder but the Avons are still quite good in this respect. The
Avons help me carry more speed through the corner because they offer a superior feel of the
road surface and the interaction between rubber and pavement.
There is a concrete rain control ridge between my driveway and the street about 2" high.
I usually drive over it about 15 or 20 mph while leaned over a little bit to make the corner.
The Michelin front would always feel harsh while going over this, like I was going to bend the
rim and it would cause my line to change slightly. The Avon goes over it like silk without
upsetting my line at all. I experimented with pressures between 32 psi and 38 psi with the
Michelins, the higher the pressure the harsher the ride. I run the Avons at 38 F 40 R except
fully loaded for higher speeds I use 1-2 lbs. more. I don't know that the Michelins offer less
rim protection but that is my impression. It seems to me the Avons may offer more
protection (say if I hit a 2x4 that is kicked up in front of me on the freeway) because they
work well at higher pressures and feel better when hitting sharp bumps.
In my experience, the Avons offer more traction before they are warmed up or on cool days
when you are caught in slower moving traffic that can make it difficult to bring the tires up to
temperature. I found that riding the Michelins at 65 mph on the highway on a 45 degree day
was not enough to warm them up. It was necessary to take some corners and do a lot of
braking and accelerating, etc. This resulted in tires that were often cold and didn't offer as
much traction for emergency stopping or turning as the Avons under the same conditions.
It does seem the performance of the Avons falls off pretty rapidly at really cold temperatures
(somewhere below 40F or so). The Michelins do this also but I haven't ridden enough at low
temperatures to be able to make a direct comparison.
One trip I rode really hard on really rough, abrasive and hot pavement that was
covered with "tar snakes", strips of road sealing tar that becomes slippery and goey on hot
days causing the bike to slide around a lot. The Avons handled the tar snakes better than
other tires in the group, probably because they hook back up more gradually than the rest
and offer better road feel. They were very confidence inspiring under this most difficult
challenge. However, I think I built too much heat in the tires because of the extreme
conditions, hard riding, etc. and this may have been compounded by low air pressure.
I may have been a couple of lbs. low when I started because the next morning they
measured about 5 lbs. low. While the tires felt fine at the lower pressure, I think the heat
of the day coupled with all the continuous tar-snake scrubbing cooked the rubber compound.
I don't think the tires offered quite as much traction after that, particularly noticed in the
cold, but their performance was still acceptable. Moral of the story? Don't let the pressure
get too low, especially if you have a heavy load and will be riding really hard on hot
pavement in order to avoid cooking the rubber. The Avons like a higher pressure than
the Michelins. Actually, I think those tar snakes allowed the tire temps to reach the sort of
temps a tire would see on the track because the road was full of 75-95 mph corners (not
really any straights) and everytime my tires would go over a hot, goey tar snake it would
slide about 6" (the width of the snakes) before it even began to hook up. The tires were
sliding much of the day because the tar snakes were everywhere. That can build a lot of
heat.
And this brings up one reason why I don't think running different compounds front and rear
is necessarily beneficial but actually offers some downside. One reason the tar snakes were
not upsetting the handling of my bike too much (besides it's excellent suspension) was
because the front and rear tires were behaving similarly, ie., if the front tire was displaced 9"
before it regained traction, so did the rear. Imagine the handful you would have if the front
tire was hooking up in only 7" while the rear was sliding 9". This same concept applies under
other slide conditions also. Any patch of reduced traction becomes more problematic if the
rear tire is displaced more than the front because then you are pointed the wrong way when
you hook back up. The tire and motorcycle manufacturers know what they are doing when
they equip a bike with matched tire pairs. Furthermore, sport compounds generally take
longer and are harder to heat up than more street based tires. Because the front tire is
slower to warm up in normal riding and since it is responsible for 80+% of your emergency
straight line braking, it is extra important that it not be made of a compound that doesn't
work well until it's warmed up. After all, when sport riding in the twisties you can wait for
some heat to build before pushing the tire to it's edge but, in traffic you never know when
you will need to suddenly avoid a cell-phone talking cager. Does it make sense to run a
front tire that offers poor traction until it's warmed up? In my experience, sport compounds
actually have less traction than tires one step down the ladder until they reach design
temperature. If they reach design temperature the equation is reversed but it may not be
noticed as much because, when warm, either type of tire will produce enough traction to
lift the rear off the ground for emergency stopping. In other words, when both types of tires
are warmed up, the sport compound will not stop the bike appreciable faster than the
sport-touring compound because the stopping in both instances is limited by rear wheel lift.
I consider a tire worn out when the tread is worn to the wear bars (or nearly so) or has
changed shape enough to significantly affect handling. My Avons appear to wear out about
the same time front and rear, the rear hitting the wear bars in the center almost the same
time the front tire hits the wear bars halfway out to the edge of the tread. The Michelins
lasted about 3500 miles in temperatures of 45F to 65F before the rear hit the wear bars
and the tire was very squared off at this point but the front could have continued on. My
last two sets of Avons have provided around 5500 miles each set, under warmer and
more abrasive conditions than the Michelins saw. Taking the different conditions into
account I would say the Avons lasted roughly twice as long as the Michelin Pilot Sports
and the rears were not nearly as squared off when they hit the wear bars. But I would
use the Avons over the Michelins even if they both lasted the same simply because the
Avons work so well under the wide range of conditions encountered on public roads. I know
plenty of Ducati riders who have tried the Avons and not one of them was disappointed with
their decision so you really don't have much to lose.
Tire technology has advanced by leaps and bounds over the last 20 years but,
unfortunately, much of the development expertise has been put into designing tires that
work well on the track. Even the street versions of many popular tires are biased to track
like conditions. I would put the Michelin Pilot Sports in this category. The Avon AV 45/46 ST
are ideally suited to sporty riding on public roads and come with the durability to make them
a practical choice.