New Tires

I need a new set of tires to pass my inspection this year. I have a pair of Dunlops that I put about 2500 miles on last year. I am not sure how many miles the previous owner put on them.

I figured it would cost less if I take the wheels off myself, that way I wouldn't have to pay someone an hour in labor to take them off. I used my new Harbor Freight motorcycle jack (I had a coupon from a motorcycle magazine and got mine for under $60). When I had it up where I wanted it I used three tie downs. Two tie downs I used on the handle bars to keep the front stable and one strap across the back. The jack has nice rings welded to it so you can strap the bike to the jack.

The front wheel was easy to take off. Remove the large axle nut, loosen the two Allen screws on the other fork and the axle is ready to be removed. I removed the four bolts to the front brakes and wrapped the calipers in old shirts so they didn't scratch anything. When the brakes were out of the way I marked the wheel spacers R and L and then removed the axle by tapping it out. The wheel is off.

The rear wheel took a little more work. I had to remove the left lower rear shock bolt to get the chrome axle cover off. The right side of my bike doesn't have one, yet. I removed the E-clip and then the large axle bolt and the right tension adjuster. To tap the axle I had to remove the muffler. Once the muffler was removed I also removed the belt guards. Those are easy, they are not held on by much.

I needed to support the rear wheel when tapping the rear axle out. The brake caliper is mounted to the axle bolt so that will need to slide off of the swing arm when it is off of the axle bolt. I bungee corded it to the rear shock. I used a metal rod to tap the axle the rest of the way. When the axle was out I could take the belt off of the wheel sprocket and roll the wheel out.

For the tire I did a Little research on 1130cc.com. I was able to find a few recommendations for the Avon Cobra tire and even some recommendations on where it would be cheapest. Unfortunately I missed a $40 rebate offer by a month. I went to http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/ and then compared a few other sites for price. Rocky had the best offer so that's what I went with.

I took the wheels to Hamburg Honda where they mounted and balanced them for me. Unfortunately they added some ugly weights to the front rim. I may have to look into options for that.

I wont go into detail about reinstalling the wheels as it was just the reverse of taking them off.

I pumped the brakes when I got the bike outside. The front had good pressure but the back brakes needed to be pumped several times before having good pressure. When I took the first low speed ride the rear brake didn't work well at first but soon it was back to normal.

The first long ride I noticed a big change. It was a very windy day so balancing the bike under 5 miles an hour took a bit more work (the old back tire had a flat worn on it, I could balance for a long time). I noticed the corning improvement right away. I had a few miles on the Dunlops and even when they were fairly new they did not cut corners like the Avons. I noticed that I was riding around corners at about 4 miles an hour faster with the new tires with lest lean and effort. I went with the Avons for their cornering and they corner great. If I were going for more of a cruising tire I would have tried the Metzelers. The Metzelers are a wider tire with less crown from what I have read.

In all I am very happy with my new tires. I was surprised with how much of an improvement in cornering these tires provided. Removing and installing the wheels myself saved me at least $100. Now I just need to learn how to mount and balance the tires....