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100-250 Miles: I removed the sprue nubs from the tires; the front tire had many of them right along the centerline of the tire. This immediately seemed to stop the "squirm" I was feeling. Again, this is all very subjective, but my impressions so far aren't much different than I reported below from the first hundred miles.

I don't get a sense that the new Michelins are a dramatic improvement from the original Pirellis. They do some things better and some things not as well as the original Pirelli Diablos.

Many owners replace an old set of tires and report a huge difference, but let's face it -- replace an old worn tire with a new one of pretty much any brand or type and chances are the bike is going to feel dramatically better. In this case, the original tires had only 1,507 miles, so the differences in feel between the two brands of tires are much more subtle.

I believe the Pilot Road 2's have a more rounded profile than the original Pirellis. The original tires made the bike feel like it needed more effort to initiate the turn-in; the Michelins make the bike feel like it can roll back and forth more smoothly, without any sort of "step" off the centerline. I also think the Pilot Road 2 tires feel slightly more compliant and they do feel "stickier" than the original Pirellis.

The Multistrada does feel slightly more confident when leaned over, and one thing I can say with certainty is that the new tires allow me to make minute adjustments when the bike is leaned over in a turn, so I am able to place the bike where I want to with more precision. Where before the bike felt a bit nervous in a turn, and I had to take a set and stick with it, the Michelins allow me to make path adjustments and they accept this with no problem and the bike remains steady. This may be due to the softer dual-compound rubber on the sides that Michelin touts as one of the benefits of the Pilot Road 2 tires.

However, I still feel that on this particular bike, the Pilot Road 2 tires provide slightly less "feel" for the road. The Michelins still feel slightly "rubbery" to me and I keep getting this feeling like I'm isolated a bit too much from what's going on with the tires -- almost like there's too much compliance. The original Pirellis felt "hard", as I reported, but one of the benefits of "hard" was that they did give me good feedback for the road surface.

This "rubbery" feeling is difficult to describe actually, and I'll wait until I have several hundred more miles to really understand the differences. I don't think what I'm experiencing is tread squirm, because the Michelin Pilot Road 2 tread pattern doesn't really have any tread blocks that could move around.

So the bottom line so far is that I'm pleased, but not overwhelmed, with the results. I seem to be getting the compliance and reduction in nervousness I wanted, with a bonus of added precision when leaned over, but the tradeoff seems to be that the tires don't provide the direct feel for the road that I had before.

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