Vaseline, baby powder and hot, black rubber.

Now that the engine side of the cub is mostly taken care of, I needed to get on with some chassis related work to make sure the Cub could pass its safety check. The tires that were on it were very old and dry rotten. While I was making the engine ready, a quick trip to the internet got me some fresh rubber for an amazing price delivered very rapidly. Now it was time to get them installed and button up the drive train. Read on for my learning experience!

Here they are. The size is somewhere between a mountain bike tire and a motorcycle tire. The rims are 17" rims. There is a model of Cub called the Little Cub that comes with 14" rims to lower the seat height. The rim width is about 1.5" and the tire width is 2.25" wide. They are tubed tires so this would be a new experience. I have done tires numerous times and documented my trials and tribulations here on the blog. This would be a new one for me with the extra step of doing the tubes. The package above cost about $50 USD and came with tries, tubes and new rim bands delivered for free! They arrived while I was outside pulling the carb.

I didn't bring most of my larger, specialized tools with me from the States due to storage concerns. Again, Amazon Japan to the rescue and a set of tire spoons were in my mailbox. I always get these rim protectors and always end up not using them. They never slide on easily and always get in the way. Maybe one day I'll learn how to use them. When I bought the bike from the junkyard, it didn't have plates or a title. I paid extra for a special sales document to use at the city office to get it transferred to my name. Since the way they do things here is a bit different, I didn't know what year the bike was. I used the frame number to look it up and found that it is a C50 Cub from around 2005. The date codes from the tires were both from 2005. That explains the dry rot. Knowing that these were most likely the original tires, I set about with my new tire spoons to get them off.

The tires were a bit stuck to the rim, but not overly so. In short order I was able to get one side free from the rim so I could pull the tube. The tubes were in great condition and very heavy duty. I would have kept them, but the valve stems were a rusty mess. In as little as 20 minutes, I had a bare rim. I took the time to clean the whole thing with some cleaner and a wire brush. I also inspected the brake drum to find all in order. The bike only has 4,993 kms on it so there were no surprise issues. Once cleaned and ready, I set about reversing the disassembly process. I sailed through the installation and had a great looking tire. I broke out my roadside tire inflator and tried to pump it up. Alas, I couldn't build up any tire pressure. I tried again to fill it up at a local bike shop, but alas no pressure. I pulled out the tube and found the infamous "snake bite" from a pinch flat. I actually had two and it was due to me rushing and not having great technique. Oh well, this is how you learn sometimes.

One of the local hardware/home center stores has Cub tires and rims on the shelf. That just shows you how popular they are. I picked up a new tube and did some YouTube searching for some better ideas. The solution seemed to be vaseline and baby powder. After raiding my wife's old baby stash, I found the requisite supplies. I coated the tube and inside of the tire with baby powder. I then used the vaseline as a bead lube. Much easier! Work smarter not harder is the saying and it applied to this situation perfectly. I also tried a slightly different technique. Instead of starting at the valve stem and working my way around, I started opposite of the stem and worked my way to it. This helped me keep the tire spoons away from the tube. Once again out came the inflator and this time I was rewarded with tire pressure!

These tires are Indonesian made Dunlops. All around South East Asia, people are living the Cub life. I am sure these will last another 15 years. They came with balance marks that I lined up to the stem. No need for balancing here. One, I don't have my stand or any balance weights. Two, I've actually found that balancing motorcycle tires doesn't seem to be as critical as with car tires. Tires have much better quality control than days past. Also, bike tires are lined up with the machine's center of mass. A car has the wheels off center. Any imbalance in a car wheel will be magnified by leverage. I may be talking crap, but I have run four bikes without weight with no issues. One of them is my race bike and two others were both run on the track. Good enough for me.

While I had the rim off, I was trying to clean the chain. These Cubs have a fully enclosed chain guard. That is great for keeping a chain clean. Bad because if the chain is out of sight, people ignore it. My chain was dry and rusty. I tried to see if I could use it, but a new Daytona, Italian made chain was only $11 USD. Easy choice for long life and piece of mind. This model of Cub has a fixed hub. It lets you take off the rear wheel without needing to remove the chain. Honda really thought of easy maintenance when it came to these bikes.

I got both the front and rear tires mounted and the new chain installed with the proper tension. The bike was looking good and sounding better! I did a quick spin around my block to to check things out. Riding a Cub is different! I'll get into some of the differences in a later post, but it is and isn't just like riding a motorcycle. I dig it. I have a bunch of other little things that I'll be documenting in the coming weeks and hopefully one of those things is me getting my plates and getting the bike out on the road. As always, if you can get out and ride, please ride safe! See you later.

Mat