NoMar, nice product. Saw the booth at the Javitt Center this year. Riding buddy is/was planning on getting one this week in Daytona.

 

very cool. I have been looking at different changers for a year now. this is hands down the best thing out there and from all accounts the customer service/support is outstanding.

For anyone who isn't familiar with this, you should check it out - not cheap, but in a very short time a couple of riders having a couple bikes could easily pay for itself when you figure cost of mount/balance, running your wheels into the shop, and the ability to buy tires much cheaper online - especially if you ride a lot or do occasional track days. I believe its just nomartirechanger.com they have a lot of material and demonstration videos.

 

The shop told you there was no need to balance tires? I'd never take anything to that shop ever again if they dont agree to check the balance free of charge and show you in person how they know it is balanced correctly.

I'm a complete ******* about this sort of stuff because I had a nasty run in with a "reputable shop" on another bike of mine. Had them doing a bearing swap on a set of rims and install a set of tires with balancing. The one time I didn't triple check the mechanics work and it could have cost me my life. One of the bearings required a metal reducer from the factory to be pressed out of the old bearing, into the new one, then the new assembly installed. Well, when the guy popped out the old bearing, he just chucked it in the trash, installed the new one, put the dust cover on. I picked everything up and didn't check it over because everyone said it was the best shop in town, figured they knew what the hell they were doing right? This caused the axle to ride on the DUST COVER, not the bearing as it should have. The bike rode like ****, wobbled, rumbled, shook like hell. Upon pulling both wheels off and looking at them again, we saw what the guy did. If I had been on the highway hauling *** and had that tire lockup cockeyed I would have been pitched to the pavement or at the very least skidded to a halt shitting myself. It also proved he didn't balance the tire because he would have seen immediately that it was all over the place on the balancer because the reducer wasn't in place. I caused a huge shitstorm with the service manager after he tried to tell me that it wasnt a big deal, I had to pay for the work to fix it and that his wrench monkey wasn't at fault. After emptying their showroom of potential customers over my fit, I left and had a different guy fix everything while I watched. We found that nothing was balanced, the guy had jacked up the wheels so bad trying to true the front rim I had to toss it and a trove other lazy bullshit the guy charged me for and never did.

Long story short, small stuff can kill you, triple check everything, if its not 110% correct, take that **** back and demand it be done right in front of you because this how people are killed at the hands of others laziness or negligence.

 

It's pretty easy to double check balance on a front wheel. Remove the calipers and spin it. Mark the bottom of the tire where it stops. Do this a number of times. The more you do it the more accurate the check. If it always stops at the same place that part is probably heavy. If it's random, it's probably in balance. Like I said, easy double check. This is all based on having good wheel bearings.

If it spins to a stop and then spins backwards, it's definitely heavy in one spot.

I do all of my own work except change tires. I take the wheels off and take them to a guy who I watch balance them. In the twenty something years I've been doing this I had one wheel I had to have rebalanced, verified by the method above. I think my wheel guy was hung over that morning.

 

I just remembered that on the first bike I bought in 1981, a CX500 modded for canyon racing, I never balanced the wheels. I put 53,000 miles on it and only ran Michelins which I changed over a plastic trash can. It topped out at 105 mph and I never noticed any vibration.

Of course tires and wheels in those days were much narrower.