Quick Fab Wheel Balance Stand

As mentioned in my last post, the bikes have taken a back seat to life recently. On one of my brief visits to the garage between hospital visits and diaper changes I noticed that the tires on the V-Strom were done. They front front is still rideable, but the rear is well past the time I should replace it. I have over 8,000 miles on the pair so I can't complain. The tires I have now are some Michelin Pilot Road 4 Trail's. They were great while they lasted, but they are better for areas with more wet weather than I have here in SoCal. The rear is squared off and scalloped while the front is mildly scalloped. I have a set of Continental Trail Attack 2's on order from Revzilla that should be here soon. I wanted to try something new. The Conti's are OEM equipment on BMW and KTM ADV bikes so they should be good for my trusty V-Strom.

I mounted the Pilots myself to the V-Strom with the exception of doing the balancing. This time I want to save even more money and do the balancing myself as well. I didn't feel like getting a balancing stand just yet. I shelled out over $500 for the new tires and some race parts for the Ninja. Harbor Freight has a stand for a decent price, but I have heard that it is hit or miss with the trueness of the balance shaft that it comes with. Other stands are closer to $100 so getting a good one will have to wait since I am on a little bit tighter of a budget with the new baby. I had a bunch of miscellanous metal brackets and some old skateboard bearings lying around so I figured I'd try to whip up something.

I know that the above pic is not the best, but it shows what I came up with. I drilled out two existing holes in the piece of scrap strap metal followed by grinding out a small "v" channel between the two bearings. The bikes axle will sit on the bearings and the channel allows the whole assembly to either rotate on the wheel bearings or the skate bearings. That way any stiction in the wheel bearings will be canceled out by the whole wheel and axle unit rotating on the skate bearings. The heaviest part of the wheel will rotate down and I can stick wheel weights 180 degrees opposite of it to get a good balance.

Here is a close-up of the axle riding on the skate bearings. The two identical pieces of metal with the bearings bolted to them are clamped onto a pair of jack stands that are positioned high and wide enough that the wheel can rotate freely throughout 360 degrees of rotation. This is the principle of the commercially available balancing stands out it in the market. These pics show the rear wheel of the Ninja that I took off to do this test. I have to mount a shark guard to the rear swing arm of the Ninja anyway so it saves me some time later.

These last two pics show some lazy work done by the shop that mounted the Pirelli's to the Ninja's wheels. The silver wheel weights were on there from the old tires. The black weights are the new ones they put on when my buddy had the tires balanced in the shop before I bought the bike from him. Counting them all up gives you 12, 1/4 oz weights. No wheel currently being manufactured should require that many weights to get a balance. They didn't take the time to remove the old weights and just balanced the wheel with them on. This kind of work is why I would rather try to mount and balance my own tires, than to trust someone else to do the work. It is also why many shops get a bad reputation for their quality of service work. Balancing a wheel usually costs about $12 to $20 each depending on your area. For the 15 minutes it takes to do the whole balancing process they should just remove the old weights as a matter of professional pride. All in all it just reaffirms my decision to keep acquiring the tools I need to do all of my own work.

I should have some more posts coming once the Ninja race parts come in and I work on mounting the new tires to the V-Strom. Thanks for patiently waiting while I get back into the swing of things with the blog.

Blue