Out of round tire

I recently purchased a new set of tires for my KZ 440 and installed them with the help of a friend. The front is not concentric with the rim by about 1/8 of an inch. As I go down the road there is a very noticable thump thump and my handle bars go up and down. I purchased them from JC Whitney and they are cheap Chen brand. Is there anything I can do about it except return the tires. I checked the balance and it is fine. I also tried to inflate and deflate the tire several time to make sure it was seated properly.

Thanks

Mike J.

I doubt highly the tire is out of round, but anything is possible. They normally have a little indicator line that goes around the entire tire that you can look at right next to the rim that you can see clearly that the tire is fully mounted on the wheel. Sometimes it takes a lot of air and/or multiple fillings to get the tire to snap on fully on the wheel. Take the wheel off, spin it on the axle and note the low spot and I'll bet you can see the tire is not fully mounted in that place onto the wheel. Of course Chen Shin is China so anything can happen, but to be 1/8" out of round is pretty far fetched to think out of a new tire. Another possibility is your tube is stuck between the tire bead and wheel somewhere.

Check to be sure the tire is seated. There should be a molded in line about where the rim and tire meets that shoudl be the same distance all the way around the rim. Use it to check the seating. If the tire is seated, then the tire is very possibly out of round. I HAVE seen this before. It does happen, so sending it back might be an option. Personally, if in doubt, send it back for another one. It would put your mind at ease if nothing else.

I have seen this before, sounds like you have a bad tire, dont know if you have a tube or not, but the tire sounds bad to me

I'll say I've never personally seen an out of round tire in 40 yrs of riding. Chances are slim,slim.

RonKZ650 wrote:

I'll say I've never personally seen an out of round tire in 40 yrs of riding. Chances are slim,slim.

ron,, I had a friend who had I think it was new dunlops put on his xs1100, the bike rode strange right from the start, we found the tire was out of round, took it back and the guy replaced it, he said it was not that uncommon

The front D404 on one of my 750's is very slightly out-of round. It isn't enough to remove it, but it's there... I bought it online and wasn't going to go through all the BS to remove and return it... next time, I'll just order from the shop, so they have to stand behind it...

I see slight out of round on most tires, not as bad as yours. The high performance shops that set up speed street cars used to mount the tires on the rims and then put them on a dynamic balancer machine that had an attachment that let the guy lathe the face of the tread to true it up (cut it with a steel chisel tool). He did that to a set I had that ran bumpy even after balancing them. After he trued tham and rebalanced them, they were dead smooth up to about 100 mph (as fast as I ever went).

After trying several time moving the the tire around the rim I finally gave up and brought the tire into a local motorcyle shop and had a new tire put on. That solved the problem and now the bike rides much better and is fun to ride again. So yes you can have an out of round tire. Thanks for all the help.

Mike J.