Front Tire Out of Balance - problems - help

front motorcycle tire not balancing - rim ok - new dunlop tires - weights added both sides of metal valve ? - rotated on stands with or without weights stops same spot opposite metal valve ( metal valve should add weight to rim causing it to be the heavy point ) - yellow painted circle on tire at where it lines up with valve - read somewhere that tirers are marked from factory to help balancing - should tire be rotated 180 to move mark opposite valve ? - disc brake has been removed and replaced 180 with no change in off-balance - any ideas ?

 

Yellow spot is the lightest part of tire, so lining it up to the valve is correct. If it keeps falling to the same spot, keep adding more weight to the opposite side. (assuming your rim is true, bead is seated properly on rim, balancing rig is good, axle is not bent)

 

i find that the valve is never the heavy spot on the rim.
first find the heavy spot on the rim without the tire, make a mark there.
line up the spot on the tire with your mark.
windex makes a good lube, don't get water in the tire and balance it when it's dry.
shine the bead of the rim with scotchbrite

 

Polock is right, the heavy spot on the wheel is rarely at the valve. On the XJ wheel there is a big piece of rib cut out for the valve. That usually more than offsets the weight of the valve. It's common for that type wheel to be heavy 180 degrees from the valve.

Like he said, find the heavy spot and put the mark on the tire there. You should have the stem installed and the cap on when you find the heavy spot on the wheel.

Aligning to the valve only makes sense on a tube tire where the tube adds a lot of extra weight in that area.

 

just came back from bike shop - my home balance ( on two jack stands ) gave the same reading as shop equipment - also told yellow dot indicates lighter area of tire - turned rim in tire 180 degrees anyway - same amount of counter balance weights as before but now on opposite side of valve - changing tire position on rim 180 moved the weights 180 ? very strange ? managed to balance this way but took a while - best thing about moving the weight to the other side is that the valve now doesn't get in the way of finding the best position to find balance - thanks for your help

 

You can a rogue tire.

 

We have found that any significant imbalance is usually in the wheel itself. I agree with the rogue (bad) tire sentiment.

 

How much weight in total are you needing to put on to balance it?

If a tyre has a heavy spot (which is very common) then moving the tyre 180 degrees will move the heavy spot the same amount, not strange at all

 

Have you considered doing a bead-balance? Wherein you basically load in high-density BBs into the wheel (1oz to 3.5oz) and it apparently handles all sorts of balancing issues.

It seems to be a practice used in the automotive word and certain farm implements too. Although the latter uses it as balance/ballast from what I've read.

 

+1
I would advise putting everything back the way the tire store did it.
Unless you know the bare rim was perfectly balanced, what you did by moving the tire/weights 180* would DOUBLE the rim imbalance.
Because a portion of the weight was to balance the rim.

 

Not necessarily

The reason we normally move the tyre 180 is because quite often there is a heavy spot in the wheel,if by chance you get both the wheel and tyre heavy spot lined up you may need to use quite a lot of weight

If you move the tyre 180 so the heavy spot in wheel is then opposite the heavy spot in the tyre the amount of weight needed decreases this is a very common trick in the tyre industry

If he moved it 180 and the amout of weight needed to balance didn't change but the position where it needed to be placed did then it is all in the tyre

Regardless of how much weight is being used if the wheel/tyre is balanced to zero or close to it then it shouldn't cause any problems