balancing tires

I'm eventually going to take my tires off to paint the rims. I've seen online there's dyna beads or something to balance the tires? Idk if the tires right now have anything in them. Should I use dyna beads?

All you need to balance tires is a long rod (I use a big ass screw-driver), 4 milk crates or similar to hold the rod, some stick on wheel weights from harbor freight (or you can re-use old weights, but you have to provide your own double sided foam tape) and a little patience.

That being said, assuming they are already balanced, all you should have to do is mark where the tire and the weights are and put them back on the same way...

But *that* being said, why do you think you have to take off the tires to paint the rims? Never heard of tape?

A lot of times it's not the tire, it's the wheel bearings.
Steve

If you want to paint rims with the tires on you can use masking tape, but one way I learned of that was very good for the area against the rim itself was petroleum jelly as opposed to trying to get the tape to follow the curve. The petroleum jelly catches the paint and you can just wipe it off when you are done. I did some small diameter trailer tires like that once, much easier than tape.

Regarding Dyna Beads there seems to be a lot of disagreement as to their capabilities, some like them some say they don't work. A large motorcycle place near me uses them and they put them in my BMW R1100r tires and my XR650 before I realized that was what they did as the norm. Neither bike has shown any indication that the tires are not balanced, but then depending on the tires they may not have been out of balance by anything significant in the first place. When I got the tires put on my KZ1000 rims recently I had it done at a shop that has a proper dynamic balancing setup, so I guess I'm not sold on Dynabeads.

Skip the beads, they are bogus.

The bearings are so easy to change and relatively cheap to buy, I'd recommend to any one that they change them while the wheels are off for tire replacement or whatever. unless they know when they were last changed. Often you are riding around on almost 40 year old bearings with 40 year old grease, which may work for another 40 years, or be ready to fail at any time.

That's it. I cleaned and repacked my bearings for years. Each tire needed more weights. Finally I bought a K 181. It bounced so bad, I didn't want to go over 70. When I put the bike on the road again after 15 years, I put in new All Balls bearings. I took off the weights and rebalanced it. That old tire wasn't the same, it had a small bounce but with the progressive springs, it was rideable until I replaced the tire a month later.
Steve

Bogus? I don't know. I've got dynabeads in my ELR's wheels. No problems in two years.

Changing the wheel bearings on my 750 was a PAIN in the A$$. The service manual makes it look so easy to just use a long drift and push out the old bearing but it ain't that easy because the inner spacer wouldn't move over far enough to catch the lip on the bearing. I've done plenty of bearings in my day but these would not cooperate. I even went out and bought a new drift set but no love. Eventually I borrowed my friends bearing extractor tool which worked. The bearings were really tight in the bore though. Had to really smack them quite hard to get them out.

When installing the new bearings the inner spacer is too long so after pounding the bearing down until it seated on the shoulder of the bore, that was too far in. The bearings wound up binding up. Had to pound one of my brand new bearings back out and order another bearing. This time when installing it I stopped short of the bearing seating and called it done. The snap ring engaged fine.

At any rate, don't let anyone tell you changing bearings is easy. Maybe so, but not always.

Lots of guys swear the beads work. The logic just does not compute. A tire spins 750-800 times per mile. Does anyone really believe beads can sense when the tire due to forces from light and heavy can actually move around in a spinning tire at these rpms and actually balance it? I don't believe it. I've read quite a bit about them, and the explanation that makes most sense is they don't actually move around and balance the tire. What they do is evenly distribute in the tire. They have to by all logic. So they evenly distribute and that 2oz to 3oz in effect masks the imbalance to the point it isn't noticeable. I'll take this as the way they "work", but to me not something I care to use.
To do a decent balance you need a better setup than using the wheel bearings in the wheel. There are several balancers out there. I got the Marc Parnes balancer and it works great. For years and years I never even bothered to balance and never had a problem, but nice to know you did a job correctly.

Nessism wrote: Changing the wheel bearings on my 750 was a PAIN in the A$$. The service manual makes it look so easy to just use a long drift and push out the old bearing but it ain't that easy because the inner spacer wouldn't move over far enough to catch the lip on the bearing. I've done plenty of bearings in my day but these would not cooperate. I even went out and bought a new drift set but no love. Eventually I borrowed my friends bearing extractor tool which worked. The bearings were really tight in the bore though. Had to really smack them quite hard to get them out.

When installing the new bearings the inner spacer is too long so after pounding the bearing down until it seated on the shoulder of the bore, that was too far in. The bearings wound up binding up. Had to pound one of my brand new bearings back out and order another bearing. This time when installing it I stopped short of the bearing seating and called it done. The snap ring engaged fine.

At any rate, don't let anyone tell you changing bearings is easy. Maybe so, but not always.

I can only go by how easy it's been when I've done it, but there are plenty of 5 minute jobs that I've started that have ended up taking all day. That's why I'll never start a job if I have a deadline to meet, because between the seemingly inevitable"buggeration factor' and rushing something always goes awry. I agree those center tubes can be awkward but I've always manged to tap them aside with a punch coming at it from the opposite direction of the wheel bearing I'm trying to remove, so you come in at a more direct angle and knock it aside. The fit can be tight for the new bearings against that spacer. but with only one side being held with a circlip I think they quickly settle down in the correct position..

Either way for $20 and a bit of sweat, I'd rather ride round on new bearings than risk old ones.

RonKZ650 wrote: Lots of guys swear the beads work. The logic just does not compute. A tire spins 750-800 times per mile. Does anyone really believe beads can sense when the tire due to forces from light and heavy can actually move around in a spinning tire at these rpms and actually balance it? I don't believe it. I've read quite a bit about them, and the explanation that makes most sense is they don't actually move around and balance the tire. What they do is evenly distribute in the tire. They have to by all logic. So they evenly distribute and that 2oz to 3oz in effect masks the imbalance to the point it isn't noticeable. I'll take this as the way they "work", but to me not something I care to use.
To do a decent balance you need a better setup than using the wheel bearings in the wheel. There are several balancers out there. I got the Marc Parnes balancer and it works great. For years and years I never even bothered to balance and never had a problem, but nice to know you did a job correctly.

The theory behind the beads is good and you can build a little device yourself to prove that the concept works. Whether that works in a tire (have you looked at the inside of a tubeless tire? See all those ridges they mold in?) and with the dynamic loads of a motorcycle is another question. I wouldn't even bother trying them myself.

As to not being able to balance on the bearings... If the bearings are good, then you absolutely can! Like I said, you have to be patient. Vibrating the apparatus helps speed things up. Maybe it won't be good enough for 300MPH, but it's good enough for the street.