Heavy Duty Tubes?

atavuss

Adventurer
How many of you have switched to heavy duty tubes? I work for a government fleet and our Police Dept. has 4 Suzuki DRZ400's, they were having lots of flats so I switched all the stock tubes out to Bridgestone ultra heavy duty puncture resistant tubes. Other than being a pain to install the tubes the Suzukis have had zero flats so far even when there are lots of thorns stuck in the tires. The officers were complaining that the stock tires did not have enough traction off road so I changed the tires to IRC's.
Have also added 3 Whelen Vertex LED lights along with a Whelen 30 watt siren that has the amp contained in the siren unit. the siren and air horn are surprisingly loud compared to the 100 watt units on the Harleys. Had a local upholstory shop modify a stock seat but it did not turn out well so I put a Suzuki gel seat on one of the bikes, also put a 3.9 gallon Clarke tank on the same bike as the gel seat to try out.
We also have 27 Road King Harley Davidsons and thankfully they are all running tubeless tires.
My personal ride is a 07 Honda XR650L.
 

ssr

New member
atavuss - Just came across your post as I'm in the process of prepping my Kawasaki KLX400 (DRZ400 clone) for a multi-day offroad adventure. In the almost 4 yrs since your post, has your opinion of ultra heavy duty tubes held true? Do you still recommend them?

Thank you
 

ssr

New member
Much appreciated GRADV. I'm new to moto's so starting off with veteran advice is just what I need.
 
A

agavelvr

Guest
Used to run HD tubes...no more.
here in the desert, they protect against little.
Weigh a ton.
Harder to pack.
Harder to change.
Skinny tubes work just as good, w/o the cons of HD tubes.

It was a hard sell to convince me, but now I'm a believer having switched back to skinny tubes.
 

robert

Expedition Leader
I ran a HD tube in the front tire of my DRZ. The spare tube in my fender bag was a regular tube.

The OP mentioned seats so I'll just toss in that I swapped out a Corbin seat for a Seat Concepts seat on the stock pan. Gel saddles suck in the SC summer and after a couple of hours in general.
 

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