I have a Brammo Enertia FOR SALE

I just bought a Zero but I looked at your ad out of curiosity. I noticed that the bike's front tire appears to be installed backwards, with the rain grooves channeling water toward the center tread, instead of away from it. Just a heads up...

Some tires look like this. For example, the Michelin City Grip that I have on my Vectrix have this "backwards" pattern... Don't know if this is the case here.

I just bought a Zero but I looked at your ad out of curiosity. I noticed that the bike's front tire appears to be installed backwards, with the rain grooves channeling water toward the center tread, instead of away from it. Just a heads up...

I'd be suspicious of any tire that looks just like a regular dry/wet tread but mounts "backwards." The laws of physics are pretty immutable when it comes to the movement of water on pavement. Now if I wanted to increase the *dirt* traction of a tire (in dry conditions), I might mount one like this, but only if I had no other tire available...

Isn't the top speed for the Enertia something like 55 or 60mph (not 70, as listed in the ad)?

Leftie, I had a similar problem with my Michelin City Grip Winter which is only sold as a "front tire" variant in the size I need. On the front it is mounted correctly, but on the back it is mounted backwards (looking from the right side, so rotation is clockwise):

I confronted my dealer with this, and he said that after consultations with the German Michelin representative this was the correct way for mounting a directional tire in the rear of a motorcylce. The logic behind this:
- Yes, as you wrote traction as on snow is improved with the backward thread
- pumping water away to the sides is only important for the front tire, the rear one following almost immediately behind it profits from the water trough that the front tire plows.

This logic I can follow, but I am still waiting for the first snow to see how this tire holds up to its surname. In wet conditions I have found no detrimental effects so far, and the tire is very quiet.

That's interesting, ME. That would mean, though, that while the rear tire is fine either way on that Brammo, the front one should still be mounted the other way - even if the arrows on it indicate otherwise. Oh well, not my problem, and hopefully not a big issue. I'll be worrying about shipping damage on my "new" Zero, and then about not killing myself on it. Zeros are definitely not "ZEV Class" in the acceleration department. ;-)

The picture of City Grip on Michelin's web site shows the thread and direction of installation. The thread does look "backwards" if installed according to the arrow. I am hypothesizing the idea is that when you are stopping hard, the front tire "appears" as if it is trying to rotate "backwards" in relation to the ground, so it will have more grip in a slippery situation. It still looks odd to me and since most tires are not like that, I'm not convinced it is better.

http://motorcycle.michelinman.com/tires/michelin-city-grip

Motorcycle speedos are notoriously "optimistic." I seem to remember that the Brammo Inertia has a top speed of 61MPH actual. If the speedo tops out at 70, and you've seen 65 indicated, then that would be in line with a top speed of 61-63.

I just found a Cycle World test of the bike, and this is from that:

How quick? Not very. Road Test Editor Don Canet recorded a 0–60 mph time of 16.1 seconds, and his best quarter-mile run was 20.19 seconds at 60.78 mph—the Enertia’s actual top speed. The 40–60-mph “top-gear” roll-on test took 10 seconds.