Metzeler ME888 Marathon Ultra Tire

[hwydoc2]

I am coming up on needing new tires; haven't heard a lot of discussion about these Metzlers. The reviews of people that have purchased are mostly in the positive. Forum's thoughts and impressions. Thanks to all.

Al in Kazoo

[WingAdmin]

I am coming up on needing new tires; haven't heard a lot of discussion about these Metzlers. The reviews of people that have purchased are mostly in the positive. Forum's thoughts and impressions. Thanks to all.

Al in Kazoo

I would highly recommend you NOT buy Metzeler tires for your Wing.

Time and time again they have been shown to not be capable of handling the weight of the Goldwing, causing delaminations and catastrophic blowouts at speed. We have had MANY Goldwing owners on this site who have suffered complete failures and tread separations on relatively new Metzeler tires, several of them causing dangerous crashes when they blew out. These problems are well known to Metzeler, they have been reported again and again, yet they have continued to sell the exact same tires and claim they are a good fit for Goldwings, for over ten years.

Read through these threads, look at some of the pictures, and then decide for yourself:

DO NOT PURCHASE METZLER TIRES !

Rear tire blow out

[hwydoc2]

Thank you wing administrator; that is the information I was looking for!!! Explains why they are not in the discussion for tire purchases.

Now having said all of that, what tires would be recommended by you or forum members to shod my 1500 stead??? I have found just in my limited looking that you can find a front tire but not a rear in the same brand and model. Automotive tires are not in the realm of consideration. Thank you in advance to all who contribute.

Al in Kazoo

[newday777]

Al
There are fewer tire manufacturers that are making tire sets for the goldwings today.
Your only better options are Bridgestone and the E4 dunlop.

http://wingstuff.com/products/1045-brid ... 1500-tires

[hwydoc2]

Al
There are fewer tire manufacturers that are making tire sets for the goldwings today.
Your only better options are Bridgestone and the E4 dunlop.

http://wingstuff.com/products/1045-brid ... 1500-tires

Thanks Newday777; will get my E-4's from wingstuff when I next need tires.

Al in Kazoo

[oldishwinger]

Thank you wing administrator; that is the information I was looking for!!! Explains why they are not in the discussion for tire purchases.

Now having said all of that, what tires would be recommended by you or forum members to shod my 1500 stead??? I have found just in my limited looking that you can find a front tire but not a rear in the same brand and model. Automotive tires are not in the realm of consideration. Thank you in advance to all who contribute.

Al in Kazoo

have a friend who had a 1500 and 1800 and rides on avon cobras wouldnt ride on anything else if you buy cobras for 1500 make sure they are bais the cobra range carries radial as well

[WingAdmin]

I put nothing but Avon tires on my 1100 and 1500 for many years and loved them. Last year I put an Austone Taxi tire on my rear, and it's amazing. The front is still an Avon. Highly recommend the Avon tires.

The Dunlop Elite E4's have also gotten extremely, universally good reviews, although I haven't tried them personally.

[oldishwinger]

I put nothing but Avon tires on my 1100 and 1500 for many years and loved them. Last year I put an Austone Taxi tire on my rear, and it's amazing. The front is still an Avon. Highly recommend the Avon tires.

The Dunlop Elite E4's have also gotten extremely, universally good reviews, although I haven't tried them personally.

yep I totally agree have tried the dunlop e3 not bad tire although I did have lamination problems with one I switched to avon venoms which are now cobras and wouldnt ride on anything else on my 1200

[mterraci]

I have a set of E4's on my 2007 Goldwing, 13000 miles on them so far and they still look good. I've been very happy with them.

[hwydoc2]

My thanks to all who have responded with their input; looks like I'll get some Dunlop E4's when the time comes from wing stuff.

Al in Kazoo

[keithg64]

I have been using dunlops for years on all my wings and truly love them. We've been getting them from Dennis Kirk for year's. Great price and only $5 shipping per tire. Works for us.

[gt750]

I am kinda wondering about "Wing Admin's" post on the 888's. Were you talking about Metzelers newest tire, an older tire, or just ALL Metzeler's? My experience has been over the top positive! I went on four very aggressive tours on my 2006 Honda GL1800 Goldwing and they are very good tires. Got well over 20,0000 km's, even! There is still some center and edge tread left, but I am going to try a new set, now.
My question is: Who has actually used a set of the new Metzeler ME888 tires? How did you like them? What was your last set of tires, how did they perform.

[WingAdmin]

Of course not all Metzeler tires are going to fail, they wouldn't stay in business long if that happened.

However, there has been a history of Metzeler tires delaminating and failing FAR more often than other manufacturers' tires when used on heavy tourers. This has been going on for at long as I can remember, at least ten years.

[Spook1800]

Maybe it's the Australian roads but I use Metzler 888's on all my bikes (3) and I am happy with the performance. Some 20 years ago a friend of mine who owns and operates a Honda/Yamaha dealerships in a regional city and whose personal bike at the time was an ST1100 recommended to me the Metzler 880. This at the time was the tyre he was running and he strongly recommended said tyre. I changed to that tyre because of the good wear characteristics and wet weather performance and could not have been happier and in those days I rode all over the eastern two thirds of my country. When the 888 was released I changed to that one and my satisfaction rating has not reduced one iota. I have friends who use them also and have never heard of a failure.

[WingAdmin]

Maybe it's the Australian roads but I use Metzler 888's on all my bikes (3) and I am happy with the performance. Some 20 years ago a friend of mine who owns and operates a Honda/Yamaha dealerships in a regional city and whose personal bike at the time was an ST1100 recommended to me the Metzler 880. This at the time was the tyre he was running and he strongly recommended said tyre. I changed to that tyre because of the good wear characteristics and wet weather performance and could not have been happier and in those days I rode all over the eastern two thirds of my country. When the 888 was released I changed to that one and my satisfaction rating has not reduced one iota. I have friends who use them also and have never heard of a failure.

Here you go - these are forum posts from people who have had Metzelers delaminate on them, including pictures on most of them of the failed tires - this took me 30 seconds to find with a quick Google search:

viewtopic.php?t=37981&start=25

https://www.k1600forum.com/forum/bmw-k1 ... miles.html

https://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/show ... lamination

https://www.riderforums.com/general-z10 ... -hour.html

https://gl1800riders.com/forums/archive ... 86918.html

https://www.v-twinforum.com/forums/whee ... -tire.html


And this is a consumer complaint site where quite a few people have posted complaints about their Metzeler tires delaminating.

https://www.vehicletire.com/Consumer-Co ... 0-Marathon


Like I said, this is a VERY common problem with Metzeler tires that has been going on for many, many years. They have never acknowledged it or made any changes to fix the problem. Just because you or your friends have not heard of it, doesn't mean it isn't a serious problem.

[Viking]

Avon has come out with a new tire called Chrome, or a new line called Cobra Chrome. Either way, they are supposed to better support the weight of Goldwings.

Also, for Metzler, there are two 180/60R16 tires available, one being a 74H rating and the other an 80H rating. If a person were to put the 74H rated tire on the rear of a GL1800, it might not be adequate to support the weight, being a lighter load rating. If that person was trying to buy the least expensive tire by not purchasing the heavier load rating, they might end up with an unsatisfactory experience with the tire. This statement from a Metzler representative, although not accepting any liability, at least partially explaining what may have caused the complaints as to survivability in use. An 80 load rating gives an additional 165 pounds of limit over a 74 rated tire. At my tire store, the tires are the same price too, so if one does not understand load rating, one could buy the wrong tire.

[gt750]

You never answered my questions. Which tire is it, or is it ALL of them? Also, is it also their newest tire? Have you tried their newest tire? That ME888 was the best gripping, riding and wearing tire I've ever had on a heavyweight touring bike. I used that set of tires hard. Air temp's over 100 degrees F, high speeds, two up and one up with camping gear. Twisty roads in California, Montana, Oregon, Washington, B.C. , etc.
I've been riding and racing on Metzeler's products since the early 1980's. From my experience, there seems to be a lot of people who do not store or use their tires properly. Were these failures due to the tire manufacturing, or were they old, or stored, then ridden underinflated? A heavy touring tire is used to the max., but I've seen many ME880 tires used.
In that same time, has there been no failures from Dunlop or Bridgestone? How about Michelin?
I am unhappy that a site's "ADMIN" person would try styfling debate without doing his homework, or just letting honest posting go on. This is why people are VERY scepticle on "Internet Forums". To put out a statement that "Metzelers" are bad is telling. What else is biased here?

[WingAdmin]

You never answered my questions. Which tire is it, or is it ALL of them? Also, is it also their newest tire? Have you tried their newest tire? That ME888 was the best gripping, riding and wearing tire I've ever had on a heavyweight touring bike. I used that set of tires hard. Air temp's over 100 degrees F, high speeds, two up and one up with camping gear. Twisty roads in California, Montana, Oregon, Washington, B.C. , etc.
I've been riding and racing on Metzeler's products since the early 1980's. From my experience, there seems to be a lot of people who do not store or use their tires properly. Were these failures due to the tire manufacturing, or were they old, or stored, then ridden underinflated? A heavy touring tire is used to the max., but I've seen many ME880 tires used.
In that same time, has there been no failures from Dunlop or Bridgestone? How about Michelin?
I am unhappy that a site's "ADMIN" person would try styfling debate without doing his homework, or just letting honest posting go on. This is why people are VERY scepticle on "Internet Forums". To put out a statement that "Metzelers" are bad is telling. What else is biased here?

I'm not claiming to be posting researched statistics.

What I am saying is this: I read every single message that gets posted on this forum. I can recall MANY messages from people who have had Metzeler tires delaminate on them.

All tires can delaminate. If you search even on just this site, you will find reports of tires from Dunlop, Avon, etc. all of which have delaminated.

However, the reports from people with Metzelers that have had them delaminate far outnumber the reports other tire brands. If I were to make a guess, I'd say I've seen at least ten times the number of reports for Metzelers than from other brands.

And as I mentioned, this is not a new phenomenon - I know I've been reading about it for at least ten years, about all different models of Metzelers. Some were old, quite a few of them were brand new. In fact, I can recall quite a few reports from people who had them fail within the first few months of ownership.

You may well never have a problem with a Metzeler tire. I put one on my wife's PC800, because it's pretty much the only manufacturer that made a tire in a size that fit, and it worked fine. However, just because you didn't personally experience a problem, doesn't mean that there isn't a problem. The MANY people who have had them fail, at a hugely disproportionate rate to other tire manufacturers, bear that out.

Not stifling discussion or debate, simply stating the facts. I have no interest in whether people use Metzeler tires or not, but I can help provide information gleaned from many years of running this site and research on others. I provided you a very small sampling of other forums where people are also having big problems with these tires, and that was from a very simple Google search, "metzeler delamination". Do a similar search yourself for other tire manufacturers and you will not find ANYWHERE NEAR the number of search responses that you will for Metzelers. That alone should tell you something right there.

[Viking]

You never answered my questions. Which tire is it, or is it ALL of them?

I, for one, did not answer your question because I do not have an answer. I did regurgitate some information that I found on the site where I bought my tires. I also, like WingAdmin have read lots of detractions on ME880 and ME888 tires, but having never used them, I cannot say which ones are problematic or if it is all of them. I was at a Wing Ding in 2011, where a dealership was pretty much wholesaling Metzlers, both 880 and 888 out of the vendors market and probably sold 300 sets of tires in three days, installing them on the spot. Somebody must like them, or else the dealership was unloading a non seller. Dunno why you got so beligerent. I re read all the answers, and did not see anyone specifically target you. You might want to go to the post link he put there and read it.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=37981

[gt750]

You never answered my questions. Which tire is it, or is it ALL of them?

I, for one, did not answer your question because I do not have an answer. I did regurgitate some information that I found on the site where I bought my tires. I also, like WingAdmin have read lots of detractions on ME880 and ME888 tires, but having never used them, I cannot say which ones are problematic or if it is all of them. I was at a Wing Ding in 2011, where a dealership was pretty much wholesaling Metzlers, both 880 and 888 out of the vendors market and probably sold 300 sets of tires in three days, installing them on the spot. Somebody must like them, or else the dealership was unloading a non seller. Dunno why you got so beligerent. I re read all the answers, and did not see anyone specifically target you. You might want to go to the post link he put there and read it.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=37981

Metzeler ME888 tires never came out until 2016 or so!