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Duane Ausherman wrote:I suggest that you watch the balancing procedure carefully, as I have never been witness to a shop properly balancing a BMW motorcycle wheel.

I won't be able to observe the mounting and balancing of the new tires. I'm able to bring the bike in to the shop today, but the work is being performed on Tuesday while I'm at work and I may be able to pick up the bike on Friday.

I'm hoping these guys do a good job, they service all of the BMW police bikes in the area.

Ask questions about the balancing procedure. Do they have a spin or static set up for it? Do you have a spoke or cast wheel? Is it tubeless, or with a tube? I don't know your bike model or year.

Duane Ausherman wrote:I suggest that you watch the balancing procedure carefully, as I have never been witness to a shop properly balancing a BMW motorcycle wheel.

One of the things Duane is alluding to is the need to minimize the weights required to do the balancing.

First you will want to determine the heavy spot on the bare wheel itself. Then mark it so you will always know where it is. Now you know the heavy spot on the wheel and the mark on the tire tells you where the manufacturer thinks the lightest spot is. When you blow the tire up and check the balance you don't necessarily just add weights where needed. Deflate the tire and rotate it relative to the wheel to see if the balance is improved or made worse. Doing this a couple or more times will allow you zero in on the starting position for addition of wheel weights.

I haven't read Duane's web site about balancing tires. He may not say anything like the above. What I wrote above was gleaned during a rally at my place where we were changing a tire. Duane was looking on and telling us what we were doing wrong.


Ken

If they are doing new Police bikes, they will almost certainly have a spin balancer.

There's almost no chance they will be doing what Ken just described, as it is labor intensive, and all newer methods are designed to cut labor to an absolute minimum.

Currently, my bike has a 7g weight on the front cast wheel and a 20g weight on the rear cast wheel, both wheels are tubeless and the BMW shop does spin balancing.

The local police units of Eugene and Corvallis have new R1200RT police units that are traded in about every 2 years. The cops went thru about every brand of street tire, provided personal evaluations on each brand/model of tire and, apparently, the brand of choice is the Michelin Pilot Road for the motorcycle units of both cities. I have no idea if that knowledge is worth anything to my Airhead!

MS is right. However, our old bikes may not qualify for some of the newer techniques.

About a year ago after a new clutch was put in my 85 R80RT I found the rear tire rubbing the fender.
So I moved the swing arm adj.over to the right, That's when things got strange. At 50/55mph the bars started to vibrate
then shimmies started. So ooo, Take a quick look at your swing arm see if there is any play.

Good Luck

Good point Bob. The practical requirement is to have no play in the swing arm. If one person adjusts the pre-load just to the point where the play goes away, then adds just a tiny bit more torque, you have enough and the bearings won't wear out so quickly. At that point in the pin torque, put your wrench on the pin to check how much that is. It will be very little torque.

BMW was wrong.................. again. OK, I have my flame suit on, so lets start the discussion.

Duane Ausherman wrote: BMW was wrong.................. again. OK, I have my flame suit on, so lets start the discussion.

Actually Duane I don't recall seeing very many people posting here who would defend BMW from criticism. But there are those who require convincing when BMW is wrong. I guess there are some who do think that BMW knows best since they designed the bike.

Hell, BMW engineers, subcontractors, and part manufacturers were motivated by what motivates many of us, i.e. be successful and make more money so we can hang out with a better class of women. In a less cynical (and less sexist) way of saying it, product excellence isn't job number 1.

And we don't have to troll too deeply to snag a few BMW bonehead blunders. Or worse than that denial that there is a problem when one exists that can threaten life and limb. In my cynical thought processes I reckon that BMW making good on all the cracking snowflake front wheels came not from the goodness of their heart toward loyal customers as much as sharp advice from corporate lawyers not to screw around with this one.



Ken

Ken in Oklahoma wrote:In my cynical thought processes I reckon that BMW making good on all the cracking snowflake front wheels came not from the goodness of their heart toward loyal customers as much as sharp advice from corporate lawyers not to screw around with this one.
Ken

Yeah, there were a few things at work there: many nation's highway safety organizations, the old bottom line measurement weighing the cost of doing something (VERY expensive recall) vs. the cost of doing nothing (legal settlements and possible fines), and then there's the very real possibility of criminal charges if, once they determined there was a real safety problem, they then did nothing. Yeah, sure, they're all looking for the most profit possible, but when selling a product internationally, it would only take one of those countries being able to make criminal charges stick for executives to get very careful.