Honda Cbr 400 nc29 tyres ( Mitas )

[eddie v twin]

Hi guys and gals, just got a honda cbr400 nc29 1995 reg , question it came with new MITAS sport tyres 120 front and 160 rear are they any good ?? . Also the Haynes manual states a 150 rear ??
Thanks

[MadMotoUK]

Funnily enough I was asked to trial the Sport Force+ in 2014 when the company was looking to introduce them to the UK. I've not tried them since but hopefully my feedback to Mitas has helped improve the tyre. They finally arrived here in 2015/16 or thereabouts.

The company started as a subsidiary of Michelin and are well known for motocross tyres but their core business is agricultural tyres. They only delved into the high performance motorcycle tyre market fairly recently.

A sub-£200/pair (£140/pair in 2015) budget brand from Czechoslovakia. Not a bad performer on the road but a very hard compound and wet grip was dire compared to the big brands. The carcass is very stiff so it holds form very well but feedback tends to disappear once the tyre is up to temperature which makes for a less than ideal track tyre. On the plus side, I managed to get over 5000 miles of road riding from one rear tyre!

However, that's my personal opinion and my riding style has always been hard on tyres. If you've plenty of tread and the tyres aren't squared off, keep them on and use them up. They take a while to warm up on the road so take it easy and build up your confidence in the tyres before pushing too hard. Make up your own mind.

[eddie v twin]

Thanks for the in depth response, to be honest I'm not sure of them like you said they feel hard , I think I'm going to get my favourite tyres fitted pirelli super corsa's , allways got on well with them on my other bikes

[MadMotoUK]

You won't be disappointed, I have various generations of Supercorsa on all my bikes, excepting the Hornet, only because it had virtually new Pilot Power when I had it off my sister.

[richyrd5]

What about bt090's....best tyres for the 400s imo

[MadMotoUK]

Never got on with Bridgestone tyres personally. Admittedly I've not tried the 090 but my experience of the 020/021/023 and BT45 wasn't great. I found very little feedback and they squared off extremely prematurely - the compound difference between shoulders and centre was just too extreme.

[cbr400rrn]

Bt45's no feedback at all and felt rock hard (this was many many years ago though,) 020's not keen on as just wasn't confident with them, used to love 010's but must have had a bad tyre as it just felt cra@, I couldn't feel anything. BT010's though are fantastic and encourage silly behaviour.

[MadMotoUK]

encourage silly behaviour.

Do we really need an excuse for this?

[cbr400rrn]