The Honda PCX / Forza / ADV150 / SH Forums

I would go with city grips ,I used them on my sh 150 what a difference ,really smooth ride , can't say any better in grip as I had no problem with grip on old stock tires, as for using a slightly larger size I see no problem ,first the forza speedo reads too high by 8 kph so a larger tire will correct some of this speedo inaccurate problem, as for abs there would have to be a bigger difference in speed between front and rear wheel to cause a problem ( also what tire wears out first on a motorcycle ,the rear so it's smaller in diameter so it will turn faster then the front less worn tire ,the engineers have allowed for this plus some +or minus tolerances)as the major monitoring of the abs module is deceleration of a wheel that could cause wheel lock up. The recommended difference in tire sizes is a industry standard of 3% here in Canada, another thing I notice is honda made the silver wing scooter with a tire size very close to the forza 300 are these two scooters sharing some parts ? To save honda some cash! I know that when my tires are worn out I'm going with the city grips and one size larger then stock tires!

Don ( ontario ,Canada)

Okay, as promised I am reporting on the effect after installing the City Grip 150/70-13.
The ABS has not been affected - the light went off immediately after moving as with the 140/70-13.
Good!
On a 10k route the odometer clocked in at 9.8k, which is about right as predicted on the posted web site calculator (2.6%.)
I can live with that.
Have not checked the speedo with a GPS but judging by the traffic flow I would say it is much spot on. Before I had to go 84 kph (speedo) to get 80 kph (GPS.)
Bonus!
The Scoot Smart from Honda would have cost $138 cdn. The price of the City Grip from a parts supplier was $68.
Saved $70.

Life is Good!

Thanks Chris for your post.
I will be going with the City Grips as well, unless more and better options are avail at the time. Have 2300 miles on the Forza in 3 mos.
City Grips on my Kymco and love them.
Fish

Hi! (my first post on this forum)

I'm from Australia and don't know what "City Grips" are; I presume they are a brand of tyres. Last week on my way home from a three-day ride around central New South Wales I suffered a massive flat rear tyre. I carry one of those little compressed air inflator thingies but almost a third of the circumference of my rear tyre was through "to the canvas". My "motor club" arranged a tow back to the nearest city for the tyres to be replaced.

I have never liked Dunlop tyres (don't ask me why, but its the same with Suzuki motorcycles ) so I asked my dealer to get me a set of Pirelli Diablo Scooter tyres. Problem was Pirelli don't make a corresponding size to the stock 140/70-13 Forza rear. In fact it seems that in Australia you can only get this size from Honda who, I presume, source them from Dunlop somewhere around the world as Dunlop Australia don't sell scooter tyres. Pirelli do have a 140/60 - 13 (a lower profile than stock) and of course they also have the stock front size of 120/70-14. So I asked my dealer to get me a set of Pirelli Diablos.

Well I picked up the bike yesterday and rode it home (see here: http://goo.gl/t5NtaF) taking it easy through the bendy bits. The ride home is about 146 km so not a lot of experience on the new Pirellis but so far so good. I feel much more confident with them.

As an aside; the "motor club" tow guy reckons the flat was caused by a previous flat-spotting of the tyre. This caused me to recall a panic stop to avoid a dopy old Toyota Corolla drive about a month ago. I remember thinking at the time how great my brakes were, any previous bike I had owned would never have stopped in time. Next time I have to make such a stop I'll check to see if the tyres have been flat-spotted .

While I have you here and going off-topic; I recently had my Forza's seat re-upholstered. Here are some pictures:







I have done two three-day trips on the bike since the seat was done and its made a tremendous difference to the bike's touring ability.

I will trey and do a ride report of my most recent trip.

Regards,
Peter

Does your Forza have ABS?

gn2 wrote:Does your Forza have ABS?

YES! And what a great thing it is. My recent "near death experience" would have been a rather serious crash if it had not been for the ABS. It has since cost me a new set of tires but that's much cheaper than a wrecked scooter and rider

Most Hondas imported into Australia have ABS these days. My dream bike is (or was) a new Indian Scout but then I read that Indian are not fitting ABS! How could you design and build a new bike these days and NOT include ABS?

Regards,
Peter

City Grips are pretty popular scooter tires made by Michelin.
Glad you like your ABS, would like it on my scoot, too.
But thought ABS prevented tire locking at all costs...to keep tire rolling for control....not sure how that ties in with your flat-spotting experience,??
ABS should be on every kind of motor vehicle....simply the best alternative in maybe every situation (even though ABS tries to cover itself with the statement that "ABS may lengthen stopping distances in some situations."....which I don't believe happens.)

Nice seat!!
Ride safe down there...
Fish

ABS can increase stopping distances on ice, snow and gravel.

Agreed, but then if you're blasting along on a scooter in loose gravel, un-packed snow or ice.....you're off your medication (s).

Re. ABS:
Euro Trans. Safety council: riding a 125cc or larger cycle is 20 times more dangerous than driving the same distance in a car.
ABS studies: Sweden - 48% of all severe or fatal bike accidents on +125cc could have been avoided with ABS.
ABS equipped 250cc (or larger) cycles are involved in 37% fewer fatal accidents.

All bikes 125cc+ must have ABS after 2016 in the EU.
KYMCO scooters and BMW bikes both have very convincing ABS videos avail.
Fish

I had no idea ABS was so controversial on some of the forums. It seems everyone knows of bad situations that occurred both with and without them and stand their ground. I thought this interesting from the AMA.

http://www.americanmotorcyclist.com/Fea ... aking.aspx

Fish said:
ABS studies: Sweden - 48% of all severe or fatal bike accidents on +125cc could have been avoided with ABS.
ABS equipped 250cc (or larger) cycles are involved in 37% fewer fatal accidents.

My personal experience exactly.

Fish also said:
thought ABS prevented tire locking at all costs...to keep tire rolling for control....not sure how that ties in with your flat-spotting experience,??

I would have thought so as well; but the NRMA (Australian motoring club) tow guy said the way the rear tyre was worn it had been caused by a "slide" or "skid". My only recall of such an event was the emergency stop. At the time of the stop we were travelling at 100 - 110 kph and had very little notice of the car leaving the side road. I simply squeezed both brake levers as hard as I could. The Forza stopped in what seemed an incredibly short distance (given the speed) and remained straight and true throughout the whole process. I was simply amazed and relieved. I can't recall any other "slide" or "skid" on my bike.

Regards,
Peter

Have a look here http://goo.gl/YBs6LT for some photos from my recent trip. The last photo shows the flat rear tyre.

Regards,
Peter

The ultimate system for 2 wheels IMHO....
Fish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1CDN6el ... detailpage

Just installed my michelin city grip 150/70-13 on rear only , can't wait for spring , I have one on my other scooter sh 150 and love the city grip, as for abs don't think it will be a problem as the rear tire always wears out first and that means it smaller in diameter then from so going one size up can only improve ride ,larger diameter and fix some of the out of calibration speedo to show a litle more then one kilometer per hour lower as my speedo shows 8 kililometers too high with stock rear tire (140/70-13 (worn out ) the fuel economy should go up as a larger tire has less rolling resistance , on the highway the only down side is the larger tire maybe will cause fuel economy to go down in slower speeds city driving as its like changing final drive ratio and making engine work harder ( slightly) and standing acceleration maybe a bit slower ( slightly) , by the way the 150/70-13 rear tire is the same size as the honda silver wing in canada ( no longer made )
Don (oh also the city grip 150/70-13 has a 617 lbs load rating compared to stock tire of 567 lbs)

gn2 wrote:ABS can increase stopping distances on ice, snow and gravel.

But who does that with a scooter?

fish wrote:

gn2 wrote:ABS can increase stopping distances on ice, snow and gravel.

But who does that with a scooter?

Just walk away