alignment and balancing?????
Posting Guru
Joined: Aug 2000
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Interesting post, Beemer, especially about the axial balance. I would expect that's very critical on a motorcycle wheel, much more so than on a 4-wheeler with wider tires. Since I run alloys on all my vehicles now, I don't clip weights onto the outside rim because of the appearance factor. I've found that using a bubble balancer with weights on the inside rim does an adequate job, and using the glue-on weights mounted at the hub centerline does even better. Actually I've found if you match up the (new) tire paint spot with the valve stem, it takes very little weight if any, to balance the assembly. I always place the wheels needing weight on the rear axle. My system's not perfect, but it seems to work OK.
I recently installed camber adjusters on my Explorer, and adjusted the camber using a simple carpenters L-square and level. I have a caster/camber gauge, but didn't bother to use it, since the level works just as good. Then I set the toe with a gauge from JCwhitney, that I've had for many years.
This stuff is not rocket surgery; if you take your time it's very rewarding, you save money, and you know it's been done right. I don't allow tire monkeys around my vehicles either......(no offence intended, I know there's some knowledgeable techs out there, it's the minimum wage 'trainees' I'm referring to).
I recently installed camber adjusters on my Explorer, and adjusted the camber using a simple carpenters L-square and level. I have a caster/camber gauge, but didn't bother to use it, since the level works just as good. Then I set the toe with a gauge from JCwhitney, that I've had for many years.
This stuff is not rocket surgery; if you take your time it's very rewarding, you save money, and you know it's been done right. I don't allow tire monkeys around my vehicles either......(no offence intended, I know there's some knowledgeable techs out there, it's the minimum wage 'trainees' I'm referring to).
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Post Fiend
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 6,658
Likes: 4
From: "Islander"
Axial imbalance is rare and not a problem with narrow motorcycle wheels unless it's a 300 mm rear chopper tire, more noticable on wide truck tires where your slinging 45-60 pounds of tire vs 6 pound motorcycle tires. I'm in the spoke era of 1960 to 76 where split cone spoke weights are used, haven't had a tire yet with axial imbalance but then motorcycle tires are of high quality (Michelin's) and nearly perfect in balance. If not i'll rotate tire on rim to see if the imbalance can be reduced before adding weights, this applies to to the truck also. Fronts on the bike get the "shoe" treatment for axial check anyway.
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Nicks01ford
1983 - 2012 Ranger & B-Series
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Nov 28, 2012 07:09 PM
