Thursday, 1 Jan 2009
Some people watch football on New Year’s day. Normally I take a little ride. This New Year I put a new tire on the GS. The old tire had been on the bike just under 10,000 miles and the trailing edge of the knobs was at the wear bars.
New tire in the sun
Removing the wheel
Before doing anything else the new tire was places in a sunny spot, not that it was very warm, today. The temperature peaked at about 51 ºF this afternoon. Still, every little bit helps.
While the tire was sitting in the sun I loosened the pinch bolt and the front axle and put a scissor jack under the bash plate to raise the front end a half inch or so to remove the wheel. The brake calipers were removed after giving them a slight wiggle to spread the pads. That should make it easier to put them back, later.
Wheel on tire changing stand
Breaking the bead
I use a tire changing stand because it’s easier working when standing up than on my knees. It’s a lot nicer using the stand than the pair of 2x4s that I used to use.
I used a tire iron to make sure the lip of the bead breaker was under the lip of the rim on both sides of the tire before breaking the bead. With the bead broken on one spot I used the heal of my hands and body weight to make sure the bead was broken all around. That is easy to do using the tire stand. The I flipped the tire over and made sure the bead was broken on the other side, too.
The first side of the tire came off the bike easy. The second side took a bit of effort for some reason. Don’t know why.
Balancing the wheel
Tire pressure sensor
Most of the tires I’ve handled, recently, have not had balancing marks. I also noticed that I was placing wheel weights at pretty close to the place where I removed the old weights. With that in mind I decided to balance the wheel without the tire.
The heavy spot on my front rim is 180 degrees from the valve stem. It’s made even heavier as that is where the tire pressure sensor was mounted. I moved the tire pressure sensor closer to the valve stem and balanced the wheel with 2 oz of lead. At least 1/2 oz was to counteract the weight of the pressure sensor.
New rubber almost on rim
Ready to inflate
The new tire went on the wheel without issue. When doing the final bead I used a bead buddy to stop one end of the bead from walking off the rim as I worked on the other end.
Using WD-40 as a lubricant I got 1/2 of the bead in the rim by hand, then used irons for the last half. One hand made sure the near bead was in the dish of the rim while the other hand worked the iron to flip a bit more of the tire over the rim. The time stamps on the pictures tells me it took less than 2 minutes to get the “hard” part of the tire mounted.
The bead popped into the rim at about 10 PSI. I brought the pressure up to 32 PSI. That’s what Continental recommends when running this tire on the GS. At almost 10,000 miles of life with reasonable handling I can’t see any reason to go against their recommendation.
Balance OK
Ready to ride
Before putting the wheel back on the bike I double checked the balance. Yep, it’s still balanced to within 1/4 oz. I also gave the rim a good cleaning. And polishing. Finally the wheel went back on the bike with some fresh grease for the axle and the brake calipers, axle, and pinch bolt torqued to spec. Maybe tomorrow I’ll ride.