Balancing DOT knobbies with rim locks

I did a lot of HP mods to my bike and I am installing Kenda Trakmasters. My riding is 90% deep sand so I run low pressure in both tires. I weighed the rear rim lock and it is 5.5 ounces. Occasionally, I will air-up and ride the roads home so I think balancing will be an issue. I am looking for balancing suggestions.

Thanks, Bill!

I've never balanced my wheels up until the last set of rubber I put on, and that was just to see what it was like. I've heard that balancing rims with rimlocks can be a PITA; you have to use a fair bit to equal the locks out.

njbill wrote:

I did a lot of HP mods to my bike and I am installing Kenda Trakmasters. My riding is 90% deep sand so I run low pressure in both tires. I weighed the rear rim lock and it is 5.5 ounces. Occasionally, I will air-up and ride the roads home so I think balancing will be an issue. I am looking for balancing suggestions.

Thanks, Bill!

I ran into this with my Tubliss system. I ended up putting the weights inside the wheel under the tube as 5 oz is a lot of weight to hang off the spokes.

Supposedly you can get thin lead sheets that adhere to the inside of the tire opposite the lock. I just heard about this this weekend and haven't looked into it yet.

With the rimlocks in my tubliss tires the unbalance became very noticeable at speeds as low as 40mph.

I was going to ask a very similar question, so I'll piggy back on this one. Are most of you guys NOT balancing the tires you mount yourselves, such as the very popular 606s? I know the stock setup doesn't have a wheel lock, but I was planning on going with the nice Motion Pro light weight wheel lock and some heavy tubes. With that setup, doesn't the wheel need to be balanced if the bike is to be ridden at highway speeds?

I ran the 606's without balancing and they were fine, mind you I didn't have rim locks. Still debating whether or not to get some.

So you are not running the dynabeads anymore Shewolf? I am not sure if my dynabeads are working or not with my MotionPro rimlocks. I need to get someone to ride my bike at speed for me and drive behind so I can watch it.

Oh I still have the dynabeads in these tires, just haven't got rimlocks. One day I might get them.

I run rim locks on my XT, not that I air down my tires very often, it's just nice to have them as an insurance measure.

to counter balance them I when over to Lordco and picked up 4 foot long sticks of 1/4 and 1/2 stick on weights. TO balance I disconnected the brake lines, simply wrapped a rope around my frame and used a come-a-long through one of my garage rafters and winched the bike up. Took all of... an hour? To do everything.

I balance all of my tires on my motorcycles. I hate vibration and will do anything to minimize it.

I do not use rim locks because I can't take my pressures down that low. Alot of where I ride has rocks so I must keep the pressures up.

If I did not to ride low pressures (deep sand), I would not bother with rim locks.

duanew wrote:

I balance all of my tires on my motorcycles. I hate vibration and will do anything to minimize it.

I do not use rim locks because I can't take my pressures down that low. Alot of where I ride has rocks so I must keep the pressures up.

I run kenda 760s with rimlocks and they haven't been balanced. I don't run highway speeds but on normal roads they're fine. If I feel the need for speed and corner railing I'll throw on the X wheel set . I'm from South Jersey also but don't run into too much super soft sand down here. Are you up in the area where that dual-sport ride was last weekend? (SJER enduro club hosted it) There's some seriously soft sand up that way. It was a good time though.

We balance the tires for all 7 of our motorcycles with a balancer from MarcParnes including the WR and my wife's XT225. You need a fairly low friction balancer to do a reasonable job. MC wheels tend to have too much friction for a propper job. Even my setup pales by comparison to a 'proper' balancing stand.

We don't run low pressures, so don't bother hassling with rim locks, but the method would be the same. We use the stick on lead rim weights. The spoke weights are a PITA and don't wok on the sport bike alloy wheels. For a 5oz rim lock it would take 20 of the 1/4oz weights just to balance that, plus possibly more.

Or just do like my 2006 WR-F did. Use 2 rim locks! Made mounting tires just THAT much more fun!

I have 606's and rim locks and I balance my tires. Does add a little more rotating mass, but when you drop down to 10psi or so the locks are great to have. I use a HF tire changer with Mojo bar and some sort of balancer with ball bearings on it (forget the name).

If you are concerned about running a rim lock and no having the tire balanced, you could always run 2 rear rim locks

Yesterday, I took my first ride with the new knobbies and rim locks. We did a section of asphalt and I did feel the effect of the rim locks above about 35 or 40 mph. Since I have a new 12T front sprocket, those mph numbers might be off a little. I think I am going to get some weights and try to even the balance.

This whole issue is just one of the reasons why I leave it to the shop to mount the tires. If it needs balanced, they do it for me and I don't have to spend the time or find space to keep a wheel balancing stand to do it myself. At $20 a pop it's not that expensive and, now that I have dirt wheels and street wheels, the amount of times I need a change/balance performed is minimal.

Yeah, there's that option, but I like to be able to change my own tires so if I have to do it on the trail because of a flat, I can.