Wow I was dreading this tire change ever since I found out tires don't last forever LOL From start to finish it was 40 minutes, and that was from taking the rim off the bike to the tire mounted on the rim. I still have to put the tire back on the bike, but I was so excited about how easy this was that I couldn't wait to tell all of you guys. I used the rim protectors, but sometimes they were caught between the rim and the tire, and so I just went for it, and I cant really see any marks on the rims anyway, so all is good. A couple of things, I was enjoying this so much that not only did I not take pictures for every stage, (would have been more time spent on pictures than the tire change itself LOL) but I forgot to lube the bead and rim, and it still came off and went on soooooooo easy. One thing to keep in mind is that I used a new Heavy duty Kenda tube and will keep the old tube for a spare, and if you guys can pick up a double set of the curved 16" irons and a couple of smaller 8-10" irons, I used all 4 and it really made the job easy. Now keep in mind that this is the first time I have changed out a motorcycle tire.......EVER!!! And if a noob like me can do it, anyone can. LOL. Here are a couple of pictures, and like I said not much in the way of the process, but proof that I actually did change the tire.

 

Pretty cool,
I used the new tire in place of that red thingymajigor that you have to keep the rim-tire off the ground. Then I used the old one when putting the new tire on. Also, I did the change with the sprocket facing downward, thos things will cut up your hands really bad if it slips, OUCH!!, Congratulations on the tire change, ya . Did you only do the rear like I did? I still have the stock front 603 and the rear is now a 606.

 

Looks good Deej. I just might have to put on my Excellas this weekend. I was going to take it in to have it done, but you have me thinking twice about it now. I still have recurrent nightmares about changing a rear tire on a KX125. We ended up cutting the old tire off with a stanley knife and wire cutters..LOL. It really sucked. The bike ended up going to the shop to have the new tire installed. We had tire irons and everything..don't know what the problem was.[:'(]

 

Good job. I just used a pair of saw horses. Reminds me of the story from the 70's related to the Russian and US space programs. NASA supposedly spent millions trying to develop a pen that would write in the zero gravity of space. The ever-practical Russians just used pencils

 

Do you have to balance these tires?

 

Bwahaahah, thats funny as hell. I really hope that this is only a joke and did not actually happen

 

Well, the gist of it is true, but the details are not quite. Someone else developed the pen and incurred the 1.5 million in development to perfect it and they then sold it to NASA for a reasonable price and recoupled their development costs by commercializing the pen for the commercial sector. But the story sounds a lot better if we attribute the large cost to NASA

Here's a more detailed look at it if you are interested:

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

 

You can if you want, but it is not necessary.

 

A friend of mine that has two boys that race stopped up here to work and was surprised that we don't have bead locks, of course we don't have the power that the race bikes have, but has anyone thought of installing a bead lock on the back tire? Installing the muzzy, jetting and the air box mod, and this new tire won't make the tire spin on the rim will it? Someone here said they spun a tire, and that makes me nervous now. But I run 33 lbs or air, What pressure is everyone running on average?

 

Ya the dude was running 15 psi, it was an aussie. He installed a rim lock on his after that. I never go that low though and think that 20 psi will be fine without rim lock, but who knows.