Inline braking is the safest way to kick off a successful scrub-in process. (Photos by Kevin Wing) This month I decided it was time I introduced you to my good buddy Trenner Marchetti. What’s he like? Trenner is insanely intelligent, quick-witted, and in possession of more than the minimum required dose of vigor to criticize most of your life choices within the span of a quick lunch at Applebee’s. He’s also the undisputed champion of arcane legal knowledge. Do you know about the 1893 Supreme Court case of Nix v. Hedden which centered around whether a tomato is classified as a fruit or a vegetable? Trenner does. How about a California traffic law that gives peacocks the right-of-way to cross any street in the city of Arcadia? Yep, he knows that one too.  No, I didn’t know traffic codes like Trenner did, but Capt. Kirk didn’t grasp all the ins and outs of Vulcan culture like Spock did, and he managed just fine. Where I did have power over Trenner was in regard to motorcycles. And more specifically, as it pertained to scrubbing in a new set of greasy tires on our police motors. Sure, it was a small victory and only occurred a few times a year, but it was fantastic when it happened. Mere seconds after Trenner’s police bike would get new tires mounted at the local shop, I would get a happy little phone call from him sheepishly asking if I had a few minutes to assist him with scrubbing them in.  Trenner and Quinn. You better believe I made him grovel a bit, but because he was one of my best buddies, I would meet up with him and get to work scrubbing in his tires while he sat in the shade, researching fancy getaways to burn his seemingly endless vacation time on. The process I used back then was the same one I use today, and it has worked flawlessly for high-speed pursuits, cross-town emergencies, and most critically, motor unit coffee meetups after morning commuter traffic has settled down. So this month I decided to share it with you. Now I am fully aware that the following steps represent my process, and there are a million and three ways to do it. So if you have your own method, just keep on keeping on. You won’t hurt my feelings. There are three simple steps I use to scrub my (and Trenner’s) tires: Step 1: Inline acceleration and threshold braking Start slow and gradually ramp up your threshold braking. Just like it sounds, we are going to keep the bike in its upright position (tray tables stowed) and gradually accelerate and brake harder without adding any lean angle to the motorcycle. Using a large vacant parking lot, I typically do 5-10 inline runs at 15-30 mph. I make a point to use both the front and rear brakes during this process so that both tires get some scuffing. This initial step not only scrubs the center of the tire but builds needed heat in the rubber for when we begin leaning the bike. And don’t worry about getting into ABS, because you smartly chose a Trenner-approved location with tons of runoff. Good thinking! Step 2: Circles During the circles, start off with minimal lean angle. I start with a large, approximately 80-foot circle, with speeds around 10-15 mph. The key point here is to remember that we want to scrub every millimeter of our tires, so we need to go slow enough that the motorcycle’s lean angle is minimal in the first two or three laps. Then, rather than ramping up speeds to generate more lean angle, we will gradually work to tighten our circle, approximately 10 feet tighter after every four laps of the merry-go-round. This will safely scuff our new rubber as we go. Yes, we could simply pick up our momentum to add lean angle here, but the introduction of greater speeds never seemed wise, plus Trenner yelled at me once when I tried it that way. I’ll leave the final amount of lean angle up to you, because every bike and rider are different. For me, I go until my pegs and crash bar scrape because that represents the eventual lean angle I know I regularly generate in my day-to-day training and competition. But no matter how far you decide to go, do it slowly, carefully, and from a place of comfort all the way through the process. Once you complete one direction, rinse and repeat going the other way. Step 3: Figure-8 pattern Once your tires are scrubbed, finish off with a few figure-8s. At this point, our tires should be scrubbed from shoulder to shoulder. In this last step, I use figure-8 patterns to confirm my bike’s new shoes are ready to rip. Sure, you can set up cones, but I typically eyeball a distance of approximately 60 feet and begin executing figure-8 patterns, successively ramping up acceleration, braking, and lean angle as I go. This process only takes about 5 minutes to complete, but when it’s done I know for sure my tires are set and my bike is safe. Again, start slow, increase thresholds throughout the exercise, and don’t quit until you feel fully confident that everything going on underneath you is dialed. Well, there you go. That’s my tire break-in process. But before you go, I want to mention one more scrub-in option for you to chew on, because it was a bit of a mindblower when I stumbled upon it myself. Last summer, I was out in Tennessee at the BMW MOA’s national rally doing police-style riding demonstrations. While I was preparing for my first demo, I looked down and realized my tires were pretty much destroyed due to a multiday motor competition and training clinic I attended just before the rally. While I was colorfully communicating my frustrations to the BMW Performance Center guys, someone called over from the Continental Tire booth and said he would throw on a new set of Continental RoadAttack 4 GT tires for me. Of course that should have been music to my ears, but I knew that because I was confined to a small training space and would be jumping directly into demos in just a few minutes, I wasn’t going to have time to properly scrub in new tires. And the last thing I needed was to draw attention to myself and then hit the deck.  Suspiciously, that’s when I was told that the tires didn’t require break in because of their TractionSkin technology. The Continental man went on to explain that it was a coating within the mold that creates a textured surface instead of a shiny, waxy one. I only half-listened because I didn’t believe him from the word “go,” figuring it was a bunch of marketing smoke and mirrors. But because my current tires were in such bad shape, I decided to take the Pepsi Challenge and let them spoon the tires to my BMW R 1250 RT-P.  Literally moments after the Continental team gave me my bike back, I dropped it into gear and went full send, polishing the crash bars with the parking lot concrete in the process. Then I went the other way, pushing even harder. Nothing but pure traction. Oh and did I mention it was raining intermittently throughout my two days of showboating? So if you hate scrubbing tires, give them a look. I’ll close with a simple public service announcement: No matter what your choice of tires or what anybody (including me) tells you, nothing beats a safe, controlled tire break-in process as outlined by the tire manufacturer. With that said, there’s just one more thing you should know: This afternoon Trenner’s getting a new set of tires on his motorcycle, and I gave him your phone number. Good luck. Quinn wears Schuberth helmets, Richa apparel, Lee Parks Design gloves, and Indie Ridge boots. Find out more at Quinn’s website, PoliceMotorTraining.com. Send feedback to rider@ridermagazine.com. See all Motor School with Quinn Redeker articles here. The post Motor School with Quinn Redeker: Scrub-A-Dub-Dub appeared first on Rider Magazine.