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[JaimeC]

My 2016 S came shod with Pirelli Sport Demons, but my replacement 2018 S came shod with the Diablo Rossos.  At 16K miles, I was going to replace the Sport Demons with a set of Dunlop GPR300s before an inattentive idiot in a car threw that plan out the window.  Once I was able to start riding again, I bought the 2018 to replace the 2016 which insurance had totaled.

At a little over 8K miles, the front Diablo Rosso is TOAST.  There is still plenty of tread left on the rear.  I still have the GPR300s, and will arrange to have them BOTH mounted (don't want to mix tire brands) but if they don't work out, I want to switch back to the Sport Demons.  I didn't have any problems with the grip and handling with the Sport Demons and the fact that they last twice as long as the Diablo Rossos is more important to me than outright performance.

[Richard230]

My front Diablo Rosso didn't even last that long. I replaced mine at 6K miles (it was down to the wear bars), but the rear tire is still hanging in there.  I replaced the front tire with a Michelin Street Radial in the hopes of getting longer mileage.

[JaimeC]

Here's the weird thing:  My observations imply that although radial car tires last longer than bias ply car tires, everything I've seen on motorcycles implies the OPPOSITE. 

Case in point:  The K1200LT can accept either type.  People running radials generally get far less than 10K out of a set whereas I routinely get over 20K out of a set of Metzeler bias-ply tires.  When the bike first came out, all of the magazines said the bike was hard on tires because they came with Bridgestone Battlax radial tires.  Mine came equipped with Dunlops and (oddly enough) I went through two fronts for every rear until the Metzelers became available.  They seem to wear together and I replace both front and rear around 20K.

BTW. the Dunlop GPR300s are radials, so I guess I'll see how they wear on the Zero.

[Richard230]

So yesterday I got around to cutting up my dead Diablo Rosso II front tire and rolled it into an 8" diameter ball so that it would fit into my 20 gallon garbage can.  In doing so, I was able to see the tread cross-section of the tread. I had never seen anything quite like it.  It looked like the tread wearing surface had been glued onto the tire casing. You could see the difference in the looks and shape of the two layers. It looked a lot like a retreaded tire.    It sure was easy to cut up with a dull hack saw, flattened out and rolled into a ball, after first cutting the steel bead wires with a bolt cutter every 4 inches around the tire's circumference.  I won't be buying those tires with my own money. I'll stick with some other brand from now on.