Saturday, July 18, 2009
New front tire
Back in September of last year, I bought a set of Michelin Pilot Road 2 tires from Derby Cycles in Kentucky. At the time, the front tire was doing okay, so I took the rear tire out to a place in Rancho Cucamonga for mounting and balancing.
Even after I had to replace that rear tire, the front was still in pretty good shape. After last weekend's ride to Big Bear Lake, I knew it was done. Like usual, there's still more than enough tread left, but the cupping is intense, and it rides like crap.
On a fluke I called up Kel, the owner at Pasadena Yamaha and asked if he'd mount the new front tire I had in a box in my garage, and he said sure, and for the bargain basement price of only $20 otd. The guy in Rancho charged me $25 for the rear mount, plus I had to drive it out there, so this was a deal I couldn't pass up.
I had never taken off the front wheel before, so I was maybe overly meticulous, but by following the instructions on the FJRTech.com site, everything worked out. I dabbled with a couple of methods for keeping the front end up, but wound up using my floor jack with a piece of wood under the front headers.
I drove the wheel and the new tire up to Kel, who got it mounted and balanced while I ran to Sears.
Reassembly got a little exciting. While I was wrangling the axle back in, the bike slipped a little on the jack. I got Justin to help stabilize it while I realigned everything, and there were no further incidents.
Since I had mistakenly pulled in the brake lever after the wheel was off, I made sure to pump the lever a few times to get the pads set (per HMarc's posted directions). The short test ride was uneventful.
Mileage at the tire change is 49,407. I should hit 50,000 on the way to WFO-8.
Posted by bnc at July 18, 2009 9:49 PM