I was heading out on a ride across the Maryland and Virginia countryside yesterday and ran into a section of milled pavement which was being prepped for repaving. The grooves from the milling did seem to grab the front tire. It didn't do any worse than cause some vibration, but it was unpleasant enough that I rode on a 2 foot section near the shoulder that had not been milled. I haven't ridden a fat front tire to know whether it would do the same thing, but riding on the milled section with the skinny did catch my attention.

 

Skinny 21' up front look great, except on Deluxes & ruining them by installing that tire seems to be a trend nowadays. Only problem with skinnys is when you hit a pothole, they are easy to damage. AND--IMHO--they ONLY look good with spokes.

 

I ran into somemilling last years and it kind of scared me with the wobbling and what seemed like less control. Yesterday on the highway we hit some, but it didn't affect anything. Maybe it was the higher speed.

And +1 on the spokes.

 

I've had a 21" front since 84.The dunlop sucked......Metzler much better.The biggest down side I've had was coming down a steep 4 lane in the smokies riding with 3 baggers. The baggers easily did 65 mph on the steep swooping curves coming down. The best i could do was 40-45 , Any faster and the skinny dunlop would start to slide out. In this situation Fatties Rule!

 

Both of mine have skinny 21" wheels.
I agree about the old Dunlop "Ribbed" is best replaced with a Metzler.

 

Maybe their going all fat now to match most of the women out there ? The term " Skinny " could be offending them you know .

 

I had a 21" front tire on a 2000 wide glide,
then i put a heritage front wheel and tire
on it and covered it with a fat boy front fender.
It was Awesome it rode like two marbles on a
glass table, and cornered like it was on rails.
I wish that a cage hadn't ran a stop sign and
murderd my fxdwg, but if he hadn't, I wouldn't
have my road king

 

on my 86fxr I took a good front end off a heritage softail, put it on the bike and put a fat boy fender on it. biked looked really good and rode great.

 

I like skinny front tires. I want to ditch the fat 16" front wheel on my X Bones and put on a nice skinny 21" front wheel

 

Could you feel the bike lose traction? Also what are you running on the rear & how skinny is your "skinny" front?