Dangerous ride with a worn out motorcycle tyre - lesson learnt!

My Mahindra Mojo had munched over 11,000km and my rear tyre had been almost completely worn out. The Mojo comes with Pirelli Diablo Rosso 2 which are soft-compound tyres. That meant they would offer great grip on the roads, but would wear out faster. My rear tyre was worn out way beyond the limit indicated by the Tread Wear Indicators and at one or two places, the steel radial wires were slightly visible. That's terrible, I know! My daily rides were limited to 5-6km through private roads and so I felt lazy and put off replacing the tyre. And one day, this happened!

A few weeks back, one fine morning, I got a call from a friend to go on a bike trip to Hoggenakkal, which is around 140km from my place. Against my better judgement, I agreed and we rode to Hoggenakkal. Throughout the ride, we were mindful of the tyre condition. Anyway, the onward ride was uneventful and Hoggenakkal was terrible and disappointing (borderline disgusting).

On our ride back to Bengaluru, we got heavy rains and had to make 2-3 stops on the way. Around 6km before the destination, I started hearing some rubbing sound from the bike's rear and we stopped to inspect. At first, I thought some piece of garbage might have gotten stuck in the tyre. To our shock, we found that a long metal wire had gotten entangled and wound around the rear wheel axle. On closer inspection, we found that it was nothing other than a piece of the tyre's steel radial wire that had come off and gotten entangled! At a few other locations too, up to one foot long wire pieces were poking out of the tyre! I hope the horror can be understood from the photos below (click for larger versions).

We were extremely lucky that the tyre didn't lock-up and cause us to fall. That would have been quite dangerous in all that traffic and rain. We hired a pick-up vehicle and brought the bike safely home and I have since changed the tyre to a Michelin Pilot Street (which is cheaper than Pirelli and has better life, at the expense of grip of course).

So, overall, a valuable lesson learnt - never ride with a worn-out tyre! A worn-out tyre gives reduced grip and increases the chance of skidding and punctures. Further, the steel radial wires coming out of the tyre and getting entangled with the mechanicals is something that could be fatal.