Scooter and Motorcycle tires use very soft rubber for maximum grip on the road surface. This is the reason they wear out so fast. Back in my Harley Davidson days I would put automobile tires on my Road King. The only problem I had was when it rained. It was like riding on ice. When the roads were dry that car tire worked just as good as a soft motorcycle tire. Something else to remember is weight. A fully dressed out HD bagger weighs about the same as a Smart Car! A scoot may simply not weigh enough to allow a hard car tire to get a proper grip even when it's dry. I do ride my scoot a lot and usually put two new tires a year on the rear of mine.
I know this is an old thread, but some folks do tend to read the archives. And I want to straighten some misconceptions that people have about car tires being used on bikes. I've been at this car tire on a scooter thing for the past 7 years. In fact I pioneered the use of a car tire on the rear of the Honda Reflex scooter.
The problems n4zou experienced were likely from the tires of those days. They were most probably bias ply nylon which handle differently than the more modern steel belted radial tires along with more advanced tire compounds of modern tires with better wear and grip properties. The information given in that old post is incorrect. The ideas "sound" reasonable, but reality and physics do not bear them out.
The following is only a small part of a rather comprehensive thing about 27 pages long that I put together about using a car tire on a scooter:
Effect of Profile shape on tire longevity:
__________________________________________
Again, often the wrong conclusion is drawn about tire longevity when comparing motorcycle and car tires. Again, car tires do not have a harder rubber compound than bike tires, the opposite is true.
The durability of the softer compound car tires over bike tires comes in part from the fact that the full width of the car tire tread is available and is used during most of its life. That life being spent mostly upright and perpendicular to the road.
For the most part, the load and wear is distributed evenly across the full width of the tread of a car tire and they would also tend to run cooler. So generally speaking, no single area gets more wear than the rest. And the relatively light weight imposed upon that tire by a scooter or motorcycle is far less than the weight that would bear down on it by a car. So that part of the wear equation is lesser and equates to less wear than that which would be generated by the much heavier weight of a car.
Typically, softer rubber does wear quicker than a harder rubber in an equal form factor and load. But because the load is spread and shared across the full width of a car tire, it will wear slower than a motorcycle tire imposed with the same load. It would also be reasonable to infer then that if a motorcycle tire were made with a car tire rubber compound then that tire would wear faster than a standard motorcycle tire of equal form factor under equal load conditions. Indeed, racing tires for bikes have durometer numbers near that of car tires and those racing tires do wear out rather faster compared to standard bike street tires and street sport tires.
The motorcycle tire on the other hand, with its rounded profile can only use something between 1/4 to 1/3 of its available tread width at any given time. Since a bike spends most of its time upright, most of the load and wear is confined to that narrower section in the middle of the tire. Localized pressure and friction induced heat on the center section tread is conducive to quicker wear. Surely most have noticed when they need to change their rear motorcycle/scooter tire that the center section is well worn but lots of unused tread remains just off the center line on up to the sidewall. Motorcycle/scooter tire longevity is largely limited by the durability of the center section tread of the tire. And since a bike spends most of its time riding on that section of tire, it should come as no surprise then that it wears out first even though the center section may be using a harder rubber than the outer regions of the tread. IMO, a lot of good bike tire rubber is wasted from non-use. (even by those that frequently ride the twisty roads)
A cursory measure of the 150/70-13 rear tire for my Silverwing FSC600A scooter shows a full width of the tread face at about 7.5 inches. On the 165/65R13 car tire, the tread face is about 5.125" across. So a bike tire actually has more tread face than a car tire that may replace it. But, In use, the bike tire can only use 1/4 to 1/3 of that tread face at any one time. So the bike tire at best is using just about 2.5 inches of that tread face while the car tire is using the full 5.125" width. And since the bike is typically upright most of the time, it naturally follows then that the 2.5 inch wide center line of that bike rear tire wears away the most and sooner than the outer sections which get less use... Even if it was a dual compound tire with the harder, longer wearing center section. A little more about this can be found in PART 2, DARK SIDE PROS - LONGEVITY:
This info here at this link, (from Dunlop motorcycle tires no less!) is lacking in its explaination as to why motorcycle tires wear out so quickly compared to car tires. My explaination is more informative and explains the effect of the differences in tread layout; the Dunlop info doesn't do that.
.dunlopmotorcycle.com/info-center/faq/#why-do-motorcycle-tires-wear-out-so-quickly-compared-to-car-tires" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">
.dunlopmotorcycle.com/info-center/faq/#why-do-motorcycle-tires-wear-out-so-quickly-compared-to-car-tiresMotorcycle tire manufacturers make the best tires they can for bikes and car tire manufacturers make the best tires they can for cars. There is no conspiracy of motorcycle tire manufacturers making tires that don't last just so that they can sell more bike tires to a captive market. It is the rounded profile design of bike tires and the way they are used that limits their useable lifetime. They could use an even harder tire compound to make them last longer, but in doing so, they would have less grip. They could make a bike tire that could last maybe near as long as a car tire and have it fit onto the bike rim as a motorcycle tire would......... but it likely would look an awful lot like a car tire. (wide center tread) And it would probably exhibit many of the same handling peculiarities of a car tire on a bike.
__________________________________________
Like I said, I have lots more info like this but it's really not the place here to post all of it since most scooters here wouldn't be able to accept a car tire. (and it is a large volume of text) But for any that might be curious enough about it and and might consider putting a car tire on the rear of their scooter, then I've got a lot of info that I could send to them if they really want it.
