How-to Balance Dirt Bike Tires

hi guys it's jeff slams racing this video is about how to balance motorcycle tires specifically dirt bike tires a dirt bike dual sport adventure or whatever you know you can balance any tire display you can bounce road racing tires for bikes that do 200 miles an hour you can balance your moped tires everything in between this is a tried and true method i've used for at least 40 years i used to road race back in the 70s and this is how i did it back then as as the same way as everybody else did it back then because we had no fancy balancing machines and even today i still prefer this method i've had tires balanced at shops with the fancy machines and then i wasn't totally happy with the balance and came back and redid them like this and uh i know road ragers still use this method so the first thing you're going to notice see if i can zoom in a little bit there is that i've just got a bolt through there it's nothing but a big long bolt it's not an axle it doesn't fit the hole you can see it's much smaller than the wheel bearing size and that's how i do it you're gonna i'm sure you guys are gonna post some comments about that if uh they're negative with customers and stuff they will be deleted so please be respectful and anyhow you can put an axle through there if you'd like you can also put it through the centers of the truing stand there's many different ways to do this you don't have to have a train stand you can mount that bolt in a vise do it that way you can actually do it on the bike you can just remove the brake caliper from the bike so you don't have that drag on the disc and do it that way but this is the fastest way and it's the most precise way actually because it's the the wheel turns the freest uh if the axle is in there you got the drag of the the seals and the spacers and the same problem if uh you're doing it on the bike you've got more drag so it takes a lot longer because the wheel is going to turn slower and respond slower to what you're trying to accomplish so i do it this way it works it works every single time i know guys at shops that do it this way it definitely works so all we're doing here is counter balancing the gravity effect of that rim lock you know run box a little bit obviously the interlock is going to be the heavy part of the wheel and so we got to kind of balance that and you know gravity doesn't lie you can't trick gravity um this this works every single time so i'm gonna move in a little bit closer here and well first of all i'll show you these new wheelbase that we brought in these are pretty slick let me grab one over here so this is what they look like up close got a slot on the side i got an allen wrench in there or let's see right here it comes with an allen wrench and you can see once and here's let me pack this up it's got a big hole for sliding over the spoke nipple the other end is smaller for just going over the spoke so and you can also stack these and i'll show you that here in just a minute now last weekend i was going on a ride i already had my bike loaded gear loaded i was about ready to head out of the house and i thought it was a dual sport ride so i knew we were going to be doing some dirt roads and you know cruising along 40 miles an hour whatever uh and i didn't have time to take those wheels back off and do this so i just took a couple of these put them directly across from the rim lock worked out pretty slick actually it worked out great it was a perfect balance mill but i had the bike up to 80 that day and uh just to test some i was doing a test on the ignition but anyhow worked out fine so you don't have to get it down to the nat's ass on a dirt bike by any means all right so from here i'm going to move in a little bit closer and show you how to do it so all you have to do obviously once you've got it set up like i said you can do it but put the bike on the center stand uh to where the front wheels are where the wheels are off the ground and do it that way the back when i wouldn't do it on the bike because you're gonna have all that dragged from the chain uh i guess you could take your chain off but it'd be easier just to pull the wheel off the bike anyhow you get the basic concept you know it's not rocket science so you can see the rim lock down there i'm just going to turn this thing just a short ways and then we'll see what happens here well what's it gonna do of course it's gonna go right back to where it was it's gonna move back and forth a couple times and bam there you go so i'm going to do it one more time just kind of double check it and you know don't spin it just bring it part way up if you spin it you're just going to sit there wait for it to stop spinning so here it goes it's coming right back it's going to find the same place every time gravity doesn't lie it's going to find the same place every single time unless you've got some restriction that's making a drag you don't have to have perfect bearings in there you don't have to get carried away with anything just do it like i'm showing you here so we've determined that the heavy spot is down there so you're going to want to put the weight directly across from there across is going to be about right there so like i showed before you put the big hole over the nipple and that screw needs to be loosened up a little bit so i'm just i'm not going to even fasten that down yet i'm guessing if that's not give me enough weight and it's not i'm going to try one of these you know there's no real um formula to this you just put on weights uh you kind of make some guesses here until get where you want now once you get it about right it's going to stop and it's going to stop it from spotting your time because it's in balance this wheel has a moose in it and uh it has a motion program lock and they're they're really lightweight the stock main walks are definitely heavier there's other brands out there that are heavier so you might have to use more weight with those but you can see this wheels balance it does not want to drop down to one place you put this on your bike you can run whatever speed you want that's really all there is to it so what i'll do next is i'll tap these down get them down farther on the on the spoke nipple then i'll tighten the allen so if you want to really uh if you have a wheel that's you want to get more precise or maybe you just need to one weight's not enough two and two big ones are too much you know you've got options here you can take these and you can stack them on the spokes you can stack them on here and uh let me find one here so like this you just screw it right on the spoke and bam now you've got one on there well that's going to be way too much weight but i just want to show you that you can stack them you can just stack a bunch of little ones stack a big one in a little one you can do whatever combination you want it's just that simple guys um i don't think we need to spend much time going any further with this you do this you can get rid of that wheel hop when you're going down dirt roads that's gonna be a lot easier in your arms hands and shoulders and just be a more pleasant ride especially if you have to hop onto some pavement and do like 50 miles an hour to keep up with traffic 50 60 you want to have balanced wheels and just to review i just use a small bolt through there um but you can do it all the other ways i already mentioned and that's really about it i think i'm stumped with anything else to tell you that's all for now get out and ride

Channel: Slavens Racing

Views: 10,034

Rating: 4.9351354 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, How-to balance dirt bike wheels, How-to balance motorcycle wheels, how-to balance motorcycle tires, how-to balance dirt bike tires, no-mar balance wheel weights, Slavens Racing

Id: 4DCaV-RYc08

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020