| Author | Message | ||
     Captnemo |
I recently bought a Harbor Freight tire changer w/ the motorcycle attachment. It was about $ 80.00 plus tax, on sale. Several things: Mount it with good concrete anchors (the shells and lag screws I tried didn't work very well), wrap the clips that hold the rim with electric tape so that they don't scratch, use a piece of carpet or other padding to cover the base of the changer when you use the bead breaker, I glued a piece of rubber hose over the end of the bead breaker so that it wouldn't scratch the rims, get a piece of pipe ( I think its 1" ) that will slide down thru the top tube and pad the end so that it won't ding up the rims and throw the fasteners away that they provide, replace with some decent Grade 5 SAE bolts & nuts. You'll need to tighten the "L" shaped upper bracket securely to use the mount / dismount bar. Also, strip the cheesy red paint off the ends of the bar so that it won't leave red marks on your rims. Push the bar towards the tire on dismount, pull away from the tire while mounting, and keep the bar high. Some C clamps or hand squeeze clamps will come in handy to hold the tire in the center depression. The center depression on the XB rear is a little on the shallow side, so it takes some muscle to get the tires on and off. The front has a deeper depression, so they are a piece of cake. I also bought a No-Mar tire balancer. It's a nice piece, but the centering cones that come with it are only 7/8" maximum diameter. That's fine if you have an UJM. But if have an XB Buell, then you have to spend an extra $65.00 for the BMW / Gold Wing setup that will work with the 30mm bearing bores that the bike's rear wheel has. I tried to mickey mouse a set up with the rear axle, but it wasn't repeatable enough to trust. They don't sell the balancer with the big cones in place of the small ones, you have to shell out the extra $$$$. I wasn't happy having to pay shipping twice ( Once Blue Label UPS $$$, the second time ground ) and then pulling the rear wheel again to rebalance it. Order them both at once and save shipping & headaches. I have everything now so I'm through paying someone else to ding up my wheels. |
