king_ogre

So, while I was not down to the cords, my Michelin Madcams were at the end of their safe, useful life. Time to get new skins. After much internet searching and reading reviews and opinions, I decided on the Pilot Road II's. I jetted over to Cycle Sports to get my tires!

Now, I have been accused of being a "Visa Mechanic" which I do not deny. However, I will jump at the chance to learn. This led me to the hanger/shop of Bing44. He had posted an offer to mount and balance tires on his newly designed and installed custom tire station. How could I pass that up?

But first, I had to get the wheels of my bike. Not as hard as I thought... But why do my brake pads hang out of the thingy they are normally in??? Guess I'll figure that out later....

Off to Bings! Wow what a set up! I hope he didn't notice that when I walked in, I peed a little. Bing44 had a unique custom tire station in his shop that, with some minor alterations, worked surprisingly well. We stripped the old tires off and mounted the new ones, complete with balancing in about two hours.

Now, back to my place to put these beauties on.

Did I tell you that I have never done brakes before? Oh, and the last person to put tires on this thing used a frickin quart of lock tight! I bent an allen wrench, and I have not used language like that since my days in the NAVY.

The short version is that by relying on the shop manual, I eventually got it all back together.

After dinner, I did a short, sloooowwwww shake down of the braking system and an initial scrub of the tires. I know to take it easy the first 100 miles, but I can tell you that after 4 miles of slow speed lane weave, they already feel stickier and more predictable than what I took off.

So.... THANKS BING44!!!!!

-R

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"H"

Arent sticky new tires great!!! Congrats!!!

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SpeedGeek

Cool! I had thought about coming up with my own tire mounting setup, but I just couldn't justify the cost.

BTW, Mr P shared with me a really good way to scrub in tires.... I found a church parking lot entrance on private property with a "roundabout". The place is vacant on a Saturday afternoon, so you can ride it both directions and no cars. Just ride circles for 10 minutes in each direction, gradually going faster/leaning more. The non stop leaning combined with the heat generated, scrubs them in within a few minutes. Stop and check your tires every few minutes.... once the chicken strips are gone and they have that dull scrubbed look, you're done and ready to RIDE!

Within 30 minutes of leaving the house on new tires, I was RAILING one of my favorite back roads - even touched a puck down!

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king_ogre

If you saw the setup, you would see it was less about cost and more about creativity. Hit up Bing44 for where he got his plans.

Thanks for the tip on the parking lot, I'll try it out.

-R

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Bing44

Thanks ROB. Those tires really work good but not in the sand. Glad you got them on good, and I had fun helping you.


http://www.clarity.net/~adam/tire-changing.html for tire changing setup.

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