Tire changing challenges, mis-steps & success!

After getting the tire balancing stand up and running, I figured I should keep on improving my tire changing tools. I wanted to take some lessons learned from the first time I changed my V-Strom's tires and fix a few things that made the process take extra time. In the end most of what I did turned out not to work. Scroll down to see what happened.

Here is a better shot of the balancing stand properly set up for the task. I leveled the axle to ensure I get a proper balance. The garage floor is mostly flat and level, but there are several inconsitencies that result in having to level the set-up every time I use the stand. Once I get my workbench, I'll be able to set it up on that and not have to worry so much about the bumps in the concrete floor.

Here is a shot of my Harbor Freight Motorcycle Tire Bead Breaker tool. I got it for less than $30 with a coupon. It works, but I need to modify it some to make it better. The issues I have are the base of the stand itself and how the rim rests on it when trying to work the lever. I need to rig up a set of wood blocks to keep the rim stable and off the brake rotor. The lever itself has a curve and I remember from the last time that it was tough to get good leverage on the bead as the curve pushed the whole unit across the garage floor.

I flipped the handle and it seems to want to work better. I'm testing the bead breaker on the Ninja wheel and tire. Later on when I was working on the V-Strom rear tire it proved not to work. I kept hitting the brake rotor before I could get the bead to pop. The other thing I wanted was a way to keep the lever in the raised position when repositioning the wheel to break another section of the bead. I looked at the tool, dug up some springs and extra bolts from my just stash and proceeded to work out a spring return system for the lever.

A bad plan executed well still ends up with a bad result. Everything went well initially. The holes drilled and tapped easily and I was able to get the spring on after some finagling. Once on I tested it out the spring immediately over-stretched and wouldn't return the lever. Awesome. I'll revisit this plan later.

Here is what I had planned on doing once I start working on he V-Strom tires. I have various pieces of wood to keep the sprocket or brake disc off of the base. I used a tie strap to hold the rim to the bead breaker and to keep it from shifting around. I thought I was good to go. As I was finishing up this work, my tires arrived. I ordered the tires on Sunday night. They showed up Tuesday afternoon! That is awesome customer service from Revzilla. My other Ninja race parts should be here by lunch today.

I had some more time and got started right away on the V-Strom's rear tire. The strap and wood pieces just got in the way. I ended up just putting some foam floor mats down to cushion the brake rotor. The sprocket popped out of the rear wheel cush drive so that was not a problem.

So the final score for all of my great ideas is 0 for three on making improvements to the set up. The success was that the balancing stand worked like a charm! I'll cover more about that process in a future post. Thanks for stopping by.

Blue