Re: To wheel balance or not to wheel balance?
 

This seem to be quite a popular consensus when I run a Google search too. Quick question though, am I better off removing the old weights from the rear wheel or leaving them be?

Re: To wheel balance or not to wheel balance?
 

you can get balance issues on the rear but the rear shock and swingarm tends to damp them out so it doesnt affect the rider leading to the belief you don't need to balance it

still a balanced rear vs an unbalanced rear is only going to be better on your rear suspension, wheel bearings, etc, even if it doesn't bother the rider

Re: To wheel balance or not to wheel balance?
 

The place I get my tyres from has always removed the weights when removing the old tyre.

Re: To wheel balance or not to wheel balance?
 

Any place I've visited has balanced both.

Either get it balanced or leave it alone.

Re: To wheel balance or not to wheel balance?
 

I tend to balance the wheel (without tyre) and then don't generally need to balance tyres. I don't bother to balance them unless it's as a corrective action for something I notice when actually riding during the 'post-new tyre shakedown ride'. You can easily spend an hour messing around perfectly balancing a wheel in your garage, which unbalanced, you would never notice anywhere through the range of speeds the bike is capable of.

Disclaimer: I am used to riding on knobblies (where a single knob being ripped off can unbalance them), so may be less sensitive to this than your typical rider.

Re: To wheel balance or not to wheel balance?
 

Good morning all.


There's seemingly no logic when it comes to wheel balancing. As an experiment, I have spun many wheels on my balancer without tyres fitted, & sometimes they require say 60 grammes of weight to balance, & only 25 grammes after the tyre is fitted.
Early R1's were amongst the worst. Often they needed much more weight on the disc side, than the sprocket side, to obtain the correct dynamic balance.

Only yesterday, I had a lad come in with a handling problem on his YZF125. It started after he had a new rear tyre fitted. I removed his wheel, & spun it on my balancer. It was asking for 165 grammes on one side, & 65 grammes on the other!
Even on a static balance it was asking for 200 grammes in total. Mind you, it was a 'Sava Ditchfinder' tyre. :D aka cheap & nasty.

One should always have both wheels balanced if possible, after fitting new tyres. Just because your bike is fairly modern, it doesn't mean that it'll be ok when it comes to wheel balance. I have seen old, spoked, tubed type wheels that require little or no weight to obtain a perfect balance, & modern wheel/tyre combinations that require a fair bit of weight.


Cheers.