Funny Story.

Like a lot of the folks on this forum, I do most of my own maintenance work.
One of the jobs I can't do is mounting and balancing a tire. Not set up for it.

Any way, in June I swing down to the shop to get my inspection sticker and they say, "Hey your rear tire passes, but barely." I'd just slid across a sewer grate on the way there, so I say to myself "what the hell" and ask them to replace it.

10 days later or so I get the bike back, cause the tire was out of stock, which would have been nice to know before, but whatever, I'm a reasonable man.

I get the bike and take a 45 mile trip out to hear some music on a nice new road. That night, on the way home, I get off the exit to take the back roads the last few miles and the rear tire deflates all at once on me and I nearly wipe out. 10:30 a night and I get the joy of pushing my bike 2 miles home. Less fun than it sounds.

The next morning I take a good look at the tire. No nails or anything but the yellow dot is not 180 to the stem. Which is weird. And the fine fellows have 3.5 oz of lead opposite the stem. Which is a crazy amount.

I swing it down to the shop and ask "WTF?"

"Oh yeah we meant to tell you there something weird about your rim. It took a lot of weight and blah blah."

So we go in the back and I watch the put a new tube in, The old one had the stem torn out and two good lacerations across the top. Maybe from the long push home which took it off the bead, I don't know.

In goes the new tube and on balancing it this time, 3/4 oz of lead. Reasonable. The guy has no idea what he did wrong the first time and is mystified so I chalk it up to a funky tube combined with an idiot, thank him for his time and leave.

Yesterday I take the bike out for a spin; 45 miles out and on the way home, it blows the tube again, which is scary as hell at 65mph in heavy traffic.

100 dollars for the trailering home I have a drink to steady my nerves and start looking for nails. Nope.

Stems torn loose from the tube. Again.

And of course everybody's closed today.  

The new tire is a Dunlop K555 140/80- 15 M/C.

Friends, neighbors, fellow citizens of SuzukiSavage.com, lend me your brains.

What's going on? Are they trying to kill me? Is this the wrong tire for my bike? Do you think they're installing the wrong tube? How do you screw this up so badly? WHY ME?

I rode a relatively new Dunlop with a nail in it almost forty miles. A can of fix a flat lasted minutes, but I discovered that, at speed, and staying as straight as possible, I could make fifty or so MPH. I bought at least three maybe four cans, pumped green slime in, filled with fix a flat, but the tube only had about a one inch tear. When I got home, stopped, put the stAnd down and sighed a sigh of relief, the tube gave up and tire went flat and gunk ooozed out. I'm really happy that it didn't just blow out like yours.
Imagine if you had that happen in a long, high speed sweeper.
Try to find rubber inner tubes. I think a lot of them are pvc. They tear if punctured. I always stood there and watched tire mounting. I'm a chatty guy, and strike up a conversation and just hang out with them. And I watch.
Make sure rotation and dot are right, make sure the tube isn't mistreated..

Yes, you've had a real eye opener. Coulda been a permanent eye closer.
The question is, why did it do that?
Did anyone inspect the rim and the tube protector?

Also, have them check the inside tire surface for flaws... (it could be that the stem is tearing off, after you go flat)...

Two flats with no puncture?,... I'd ask for new tire...

The dot on the tire is at the "lightest" part of the tire.  With tubeless rims you can put the wheel with the valve stem installed in the balancing jig, and determine what part of the wheel is the heaviest.....and then put the tire dot at that location.  That way the least amount of balancing weight can be used.

With a tubed tire you can't do that, and you have to assume the heaviest part of the rim will be where the valve stem is located.  If you find you need a lot of weight.....then break the tire loose and rotate it 180 degrees and see that happens.  You can also rotate it at 90 degree increments and see what position needs the least amount of weight.

How old is the tire they mounted?  I had an old tire that kept spinning on the rim and tearing out valve stems....as the rubber had gotten hard and would not longer grip the rim and the tire would spin and rip out the valve stem.  A fresher tire and the problem went away.  The last 4 digits of the tire code are.....the first 2 digits are  the week the tire was made, and the next two are the year.  (Example 4114 would be the 41st week of 2014).

I'll have to check mine. Thanks for the tip Serowbot!

Naturally, I'd prefer actual experience to speculation about this... :^/


Dude, this is an internet forum....

Sonny,

In 1959 crossing the bridge from Wrightsville to Columbia, PA I picked up a nail in the one tire on my brand new AJS Scrambler. My brother was with me and we managed to push the bike to Columbia and found a gas station open on Sunday. We were able to get the tire apart with the little tire irons that came in the tool kit, and the gas station attendant hot patched the tube. We could not get the bead back over the rim. We went to a convenience store and bought a box of corn starch and used the corn starch as a lubricant to get the tire back on the rim. Pumped the tire up and rode to Lancaster.

In all my years of changing motorcycle tires I never used soapy water. I always used corn starch or talcum powder.

Kenny G

Kenny G wrote on 08/09/15 at 23:17:29:


Thanks for this.