The hardest thing is breaking the bead. After that, the trick is to keep the bead (opposite from where you're levering over the rim) in the wheel well. I use plenty of lube & a couple of screwdrivers with rag wrapped around them. It's worth buying some bead sealer too, for extra insurance against leaks. If the tyre has a yellow dot on the sidewall, line that up with the valve as it's the lightest part of the tyre. A red dot is the high spot. When inflating, I find it best to leave the valve core out so that the air gets in faster to seat the bead. Pump it to about 50 psi to make sure it's seated properly. Mind your fingers!
This poor chap left his finger tip in when the tyre popped onto its seat. It made it difficult to balance with 10 grams of digit tip floating around inside.
Great advice there. One thing I've seen is not always is the lightest part of the wheel where the valve stem goes. It should be if quality control of the wheel manufacturing is good. Maybe it's only Harley riders that have this problem? (I think it's worth balancing the wheel without the tyre for the first time, to check if it's true in that case. If not, mark the wheel somewhere inconspicuous for next time?).
Started doing my own tyres a few years ago on fireblade and street triple as was re-sprayng blade wheels. Got the motion pro, beadpro tyre levers/bead breaker and abba balancer. Not the cheapest, but as they sell second hand on ebay for almost same price as new, long term they work out cheap!! Watched good videos on web, cracked the bead (levers worked well) and tyre came off easier than expected. Put tyres back on, only thing lever slipped on last bit and scratched newly painted wheel - you learn by your mistakes and not done it since!! Balancing easy with the abba - quality kit and comes complete with weights. Done four tyres now and a puncture so it's paying for itself. The blade tyres were £135 delivered for a pair of Bt016 and sold the old ones for £40!! If your handy with the spanners give it a go, was easier than I had thought
Sorry about that. I teach motor vehicle studies in a college, so just saying to students "Mind your fingers" isn't really enough. The victim there is a professional mechanic. If only he'd seen the same picture first!
That's probably true of spoked wheels, but Honda alloys will be pretty much perfect unless they're damaged. I've checked / demonstrated the good balance, even of plain old steel car wheels, a million(?) times on proper electronic balancing machines. Always zero zero, inner & outer. I'm probably teaching you how to suck eggs here. Apologies in advance. To check wheel runout (trueness) without a DTI gauge. Get wheel off ground and make sure there's no play in the wheel bearings. Hold a pencil against something solid (swing arm/fork) with the tip against the edge of the wheel rim. Rotate wheel slowly & look for any change in the gap between the pencil tip & rim. By all means check the balance of the wheel on its own. It's always good to have peace of mind. PS I have a spare wheel balancer you can have for cheap. BNIB. I'm in Chelmsford though.
Good to know. No, I have no experience balancing wheels yet, just a lot of research and observing. If I struggle for an hour to get a tyre off a rim, I think I should put an extra 5 mins into doing this, will be educational anyway That's kind of you thanks, but I realised I have a spare tube of skateboard bearings, so I'm thinking about building my own, at least to try.
@Coda I just won't shut up! A couple of tips regarding balancing, as it's really important if you want to minimise numb hands. Get a balancer with the largest diameter bearings. They're more accurate. Adding weight is still a bit hit & miss, and very time consuming with those static balancers. So before you peel off the adhesive strip, add the weight using a bit of masking tape & recheck. Fix permanently when you're fed up with waiting for the wheel to stop randomly! Some of the cheap balance weights are made of steel. They can corrode & look ugly unless you paint them. Try to get zinc ones if painting them will look naff.
you don't need a balancer to balance wheels, if you put the axle in the wheel then rest this on two flat surfaces either side so the wheel can spin, you then rock the axle by turning the axle clockwise then anti clockwise, the heavy part will soon fall to the bottom, Mark the high spot then turn this to 3 o clock, masking tape on 20g and rock the axle if it goes up add more if it goes down take some off, do this till it stays still, this will balance to less than 2g not liking to see wheel weights I make my own lead ones to the right weight then spray them gold to match the wheel job done Yorkshire style, and no storing of the balancer it is also handy if you are just taking your wheels out for maint and don't want to buy a balancer to check
That sounds interesting. This could this be done with the wheel still on the bike in that case (with the callipers removed), and get good results? I'm thinking of where the friction is though. When I put my wheel on a balancing spindle, it's only the wheel balancer bearings that ever turn. The brand new OE wheel bearings do not revolve at all. And the cheap balancer has cheap bearings. You can be sure of that.
I watched a youtube video where someone tested balancing the wheel on it's own axle and got terrible results. That's not to say it's not possible, maybe it depends on the state of the bearings?
Bearings and drag - proper setups use quality low friction bearings to give best results. That's not to say you can't get good results on axle, but you will get more consistent and accurate balancing on purpose built setup. My abba setup seemed to work well, but then again not sure what an out of balance wheel on a motorbike feels like!
Feels same as in a car. Nothing at low speeds then as speed increases to say 50mph “drumming” through the steering starts to appear, then increasing with speed. Usually a speed say 80mph when it’s at its worst (because vibration is at natural harmonic frequency of the frame or some other big component). Actually improves a bit as you increase speed further past that harmonic point. You’ll want it fixing ASAP as it’s physically irritating and (if it’s bad) mentally too as you worry for the bike getting a good rattling!
You have to rock the axle on flat surfaces so this totally removes any drag from the bearings and seals, you cannot do it in the bike as you cannot rock the axle, and you will have bearing drag Roll the axle on the flat surface back and forth about half turn, the heavy spot on the wheel will drop to the bottom in about 25 seconds. they used to use this method for turbos that spin to 200k
