Tire changing stand

[SpeedyManiac]

roostafish,
I see you're in Oregon. I'm just across the border from Washington (2 hours north of Spokane. If you ever want to do some riding and get some tips on tire changes, shoot me a PM. I'd be glad to share my experience and give you lots of tips on what not to do.

Rule #1: Don't use Tire Balls at the Six Days, unless it's somewhere cold and wet (Slovakia and New Zealand would have been well suited to them). Anywhere hot and/or remotely rocky means using mousses. Learn how to change them (it's not overly difficult with some practice). The last thing you want to do is spend a ton of money and 1-2 years of your life training for a race, only to have your tires shit the bed on day 1. I was lucky in that I lost time, but still finished. But, Tire Balls cost me a good chance at a silver medal.

[GMP]

I only run tubes, and usually I'm not in a hurry, so I just use the garage floor with a carpet scrap. Just like the ground in the woods if neccessary. What I would be interested in is a tire changer that I can use for my Ducati Marchesini wheels (and not scratch them), as well as the GG wheels.

[Boomhauer]

Glenn,

I bought a cheap manual tire changing stand from Harbor Freight tools. I think I paid $70 for it. I used it when I was road racing. I also bought a manual tire balancer. I got tired of paying shops $20 per tire to change them for me. Motion pro makes some rim protectors to keep from scratching those fancy wheels as I also have 8 of them in my tool box. It takes a bit to learn how to change those street tires but once you do it saves you plenty of money.

Since I do not use the balancer anymore I will offer it up to you if you ever get interested enough to do them yourself.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=34542

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=42927

http://www.mile-x.com/handy-13009-wheel-balancer.aspx

http://www.motionpro.com/motorcycle/...im_protectors/

[mike989]

[QUOTE=Boomhauer;25492]Glenn,

I bought a cheap manual tire changing stand from Harbor Freight tools. I think I paid $70 for it.



I bought one of those a couple of years ago, and made a few modifications. I'm looking at buying some nylon rim clamps from Wilko, a 1000 times better than the cast metal molded HF one's. After changing quite a few tires I found good tire irons are more important than a good stand. I now own 3 good irons and have never pinched a tube since.
I like Fredette unit, nice and basic.

[roostafish]

Speedy, I'm very interested in hearing more details of your tire balls failing. I was thinking of using them for the express fact that Mousses are short lived, and fail under heat. They tend to turn to dust if the lube gets dry. We have been discussing just running tubes in the rear, and a mousse or tire balls up front, or even the tubliss system. I can whip a tire change out with a tube, and frankly, I rarely have any problems with flats. The thing is, just like you were saying, I don't want to have problems. I want reliability. I certainly don't want to be putting all this effort in just to come home the victim of a mechanical. I'll have a tough enough time keeping on time without mechanical prolblems, which is why your input, and that of others is important to me.

[cal_tony]

Put me in the Harbor freight category also. Mine gets lots of use.
I also made my own balancing stand. 2 pieces of angle iron screwed to some jack stands. each piece of angle has 2 bearings. I just use the axles and it works great.

Tony

[SpeedyManiac]

Mousses can fail (look at Dakar this year) but it's very rare at the ISDE. I doubt Mexico will be as hot as Greece was (35-40°C everyday - 90-100°F) and we never had issues with the mousses. Use decent amounts of lube (not too much if you're not using rimlocks) and it's a non-issue. The one place mousses tend to fail is prolonged high speed road riding. This wasn't an issue in Greece, and we never had issues in Chile either where the speeds were quite high at times (one of our trophy riders was up around 150km/h on the highway sections).

Don't even think of using tubliss. FIM tires aren't very durable, so I guarantee you'll get a flat using the tubliss system. Tireballs are great in a rear tire, but suck in the front tire in rough conditions. They also don't like heat. I ride with my head over the front fender, so the front end takes a pounding. Combined with the heat, a little over half way through day 1 ALL of my tireballs were flat in my front tire. Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared so I had to ride the rest of the day on a flat front tire, pounding through rocks. I had to slow way down to preserve the wheel (can't change hubs) so I lost about 23 minutes on day 1, and was physically spent from wrestling a bike with a front flat for over 100km.

If you want reliability, use mousses. For the ISDE you'll need 4 of them - 2 front and 2 rear. Get brand new ones to start with, properly sized for the tires and don't bother with rimlocks.

For non-tubes in adverse conditions, mousses are generally the most durable, followed by tire balls then tubliss.

[sprocket74]

Way to go Speedy if you almost got a Silver then Craig must have been close to a Gold thats awesome.

[roostafish]

Thanks for the report speedy. I really think I'll go ahead and use a rimlock, even with a mousse. The other thing about the mousses is that they just have such a short life span. If you get through the six days on tire balls, you could use them for a couple of years, especially trail riding, you'd have a bunch of extra balls.

Jeff Fredette uses tire balls, I wonder overall what others have experienced. It may even pay to do a mousse in front, balls in back. I doubt I'll be changing the front tire every day. It would be nice to have the peace of mind to just leave it alone.

[SpeedyManiac]

Craig, got a silver, but he was a ways off a gold. To get a gold medal you have to HAUL ASS. A good rider can get a silver, but to get a gold you have to be an elite rider. Maybe some day...

You can get a long time out of a mousse, once you learn the tricks. Tire balls do have a longer life span, if you don't break them. You're spending upwards of $10k to do the six days, so what if you trash 4 mousses during the event. Cheaping out on something as critical as mousses is a bad idea. Fredette used tire balls in New Zealand, and 1 day in Chile. He had the same problem as me in Chile, but he was prepared and swapped out to a tube half way through the day, then ran mousses for the remainder of the event. Jeff used mousses in Greece. I'd only use tire balls at the ISDE if it's going to be a muddy, technical one (like NZ) with little high speed riding or rocks.