is it safe to miss match tyre patterns?

 

its always recommended to use the same tire front and back

 

I'd say you can in normal riding. I had an M2 rear with a pilot power front for 4500 miles. I got a nail in the rear tire, plugged it, drove slow to the nearest bike shop and bought what he had. But I ride kinda easy and I would say if you are gonna push it hard, you want the compounds to match due to temperture/grip levels.

 

Most tyre companies like to sell them as sets, in the (bad) old days, tyre profile front & rear, from different makes (square blocks & rounds tyre profiles), could be totally different, and in lean angles could cause some serious adhesion problems, (as in front or rear runs out of contact before the other tyre & the rider is aware of it) & whoops, away you goes. These days, this does not present a problem. The profiles are identical on sports bike tyres, the only difference being tread patters & rubber compounds. They like to sell them as sets, most companies stating that the front tyres are designed to work in unison with the rear (as in say, clearing a better contact path in the wet for the rear) I agree with fishfryer about getting similiar compound, although I have run a Sports tourer on the front and Sports on the front (& vice versa) from the same manufacturer without any probs. The only other advice that I can give is, don't cheap out, buy the best tyre you can afford. Even at the best of times you only have a little over 2 inches of tyre footprint on the road.

 

so basically what we are all saying is its not the pattern mismatching you should be worried about but the different compound levels of two different tires.........