Dynabeads, or similar products: Yes or no?

Igofar said:
I laughed as I read your second paragraph.
How would you know how much to use?
The amount is given for the size of the tire.
And as the tire wears it adjusts etc.
When I sold my k&L tire machine I went back to using spoons, and I actually enjoy it more.
With the right amount of heat, the correct tire paste, and a portable tire stand, I have not found a tire that could not be removed or mounted.
On the really hard ones, I use duct tape and can normally push them on by hand without tools even.
Anyway, I started balancing tires with ride on because of the wear that weights were causing, and like you, I hate balancing tires nowadays.
Click to expand...
I'd measure the weight of it with a digital scale and add a smidge more for the couple of drops that didn't get into the tire from the cup I poured it out of.) Or I could trust the manufacturer and put in the amount they say to put in. If I'd known that life was going to be full of these kinds of challenges I never would have grown up.

I use spoons, too, and I'm not exactly in love with them. I don't have a portable tire stand, but I'd like one. Which one do you have?

Heat? Duct tape? Please explain. I'm missing these things in my process.

I use No-Mar tire paste. We should start a tire paste thread.) I shudder to think that people are using the wrong paste.
 
Daboo said:
(This is going to be so much fun. ;) ) Let me toss in another product. Slime. (I suspect this thread will get another 10 pages now. It's called SDS - Slime Derangement Syndrome.)

Slime is similar to Ride On, but a different colour and it doesn't cost as much. If you want to read further, it's just my personal experience with using Slime.


I had purchased a 2007 Suzuki Burgman 400 scooter and was commuting 74+ miles per day. My "excuse" for getting my wife to go along with this purchase was the money it would save. She was definitely not happy with the purchase. At all. :(

I had picked up a small screw in the rear tire, and asked the "experts" on the BurgmanUSA forum what they would do. A couple said they'd repair it, but the majority said they would replace the tire. While I waited for the new tire to come in, I tried repairing the tire with a worm. That still seemed to have a small leak, so I bought a bottle of Slime to put in it. It seemed to fix the leak, but I'd already paid for a new tire and had an appointment to replace the tire. So I did...and wondered if I'd been to quick to replace the tire.

About 3 months later, I picked up a small cotter pin in the new tire. Maybe I'd get lucky and it wouldn't have gone all the way through. No such luck. It leaked. Not much, but it was definitely leaking. I thought about going upstairs and telling my wife I was going to buy another new tire...and the reaction my wife had the first time. It centered around how this bike was supposed to save us money, but was costing us a lot. And for her any excuse to keep me from riding was one to be used. I did not want to incur the wrath of She Who Must Be Obeyed! My eyes looked over to a shelf in the garage, searching for any solution...and saw the remainder of the Slime bottle. I decided to give it a try...and it worked!

That year, I picked up 4 or 5 metal objects on my commute. The Slime still worked on all of them.

In the meantime I had read all the horror stories about Slime. It would rust your rims. It made a huge mess when you took the tire apart. You wouldn't be able to have kids, and you'd be struck by lightning. Well, maybe not the last two outcomes. When the tire wore out, I asked if I could be there to watch when the tire was removed from the rim.

When the mechanic took the tire off, he made a loud exclamation, "What a mess!" Except there wasn't any. The Slime had become tacky and was in the center of the tread area. A bit had fallen on the hub in the center and dried there, but not much. It's water soluble, so it came off without much effort. There was no damage to the rim at all. Where you'll get a mess, is if you put the Slime in and shortly after, break the tire down. But if you ride with it in there for awhile like I did, it stays put where it needs to be and makes no mess.

My theory on how it works is there are these fibers suspended in the solution. When a puncture happens, the liquid and fibers travel to the puncture site. The effect is like a logjam on a river. The liquid flows out, leaving the fibers behind.

So have I stirred the pot any? :D

Chris
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Suzuki Burgman 400. Good choice. Slime....We used it in our mower tires when we had a lawn service. Yeh, the folks who removed the tires sure didn't like it, but we got tired of plugging our tires all the time. Sounds like Ride-On is more of a tire balancer than Slime since it stays more of a liquid. Or so I'm told. So...did the bike vibrate horribly and loosen your fillings with those tires that went out of balance with wear?
 
Except nylon ties can damage the bead area on the tire, and they take up more space that you're trying to make.
Duct tape is completely flat, slippery when you add tire paste, and it's cheaper and easier to use.
I mounted this front tire on a member's rim without even using tire spoons.
If you want to find the easiest way to do something, ask a lazy person how to do it :rofl1:

20190924_221524_1592871183874_001.jpg
 
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I'll try to answer the questions about Slime...and in a round about way, about Ride-On too.

Yeah, they get a bit tacky, but not like they don't work. As an example, I had a medium sized nail puncture the tire. I pulled the nail out in my garage. Air went whooshing out. Clearly the Slime wasn't working. I figured I could help it out. So I rotated the tire so the puncture site was at 6 o'clock. About a tablespoon of light green clear liquid came out. And then that was it. I'm guessing I had about 6000 miles on the tire by that time. I kept it on for about 14,000 miles before changing.

So while the Slime got tacky, it still stayed liquid enough to fix a puncture. Slime didn't make claims about tire balancing the last time I was on their website, but it operates on the same physics that makes Ride-On and Dynabeads work. I never felt an imbalance in my tires when I've used Slime. I have a friend who used Ride-On in his tires, and I changed his tires for him. He never complained about feeling any imbalance at all. And I never had a mess in changing his tires.

After as many tires as I've changed (lots because motorcycle tires don't last long...at the most a year for me, and sometimes less)...here's the logic diagram in words for how I will be approaching the next tire change on my XR.
  1. Mount the tires with no weight on the rim and simply aligning the dot on the sidewall with the valve stem.
  2. Test ride at freeway speeds. If smooth, quit. If not...
  3. Install Dynabeads. Problem solved.
Other options...
  • Install Slime/Ride-On. If I use Slime/Ride-On, it would be when I get the puncture, not before. And to use it would mean I'd have to remove the Dynabeads first.
  • Buy a tire balancer.
The known unknown (to use project manager speak), is that I don't know how well the XR's rims are balanced. For the Bridgestone T32s from my F800GT, and probably two sets before them of Continental RA2s and another tire before them, I haven't needed to use anything but Dynabeads on about two of those tires. That means that of 6 sets of tires, I've only balanced 2 of them. The others did not need balancing. Why do my rims on my F800GT and XR now have weights? And yet on the GT, I didn't need any additional weights after removing them? I don't know. But if my tires/rims feel balanced at speeds that would get my bike towed away and a ride in the backseat of an LEO's vehicle ...why do I need a solution to a problem that doesn't exist?

Chris
 
I think the heat idea for those of us in Washington state is a non-starter. Put your tires out in the sun? Even in the summer, it only gets hot enough to help on about 3-4 days of the year...and that's when you want to be out riding, not changing a tire.

For those of you who live in cooler climates, another solution to heating your tires is to put something like a halogen work lamp inside the tires and then put a board across the top to trap the heat in. Twenty plus years ago, I picked up some halogen work lights. They are way too bright to use as a work light. If they are in your vision, you are blinded. But!!!...they put out a lot of heat. I'm sure my electric meter dials are going round and round and round while they are plugged in. They are perfect for heating tires. I put a board down first on the concrete as insulation, put the lights inside the empty space, and then cover the top with a board. Then I eat breakfast and when I come back, the tires are nice and ready to mount.

Chris
 
Q: How off center can the puncture be for Slime/Ride-On to work?

A: About the same as for a tire plug. Nothing works on a sidewall. If you get something to work on a sidewall, consider it an extremely temporary fix to get you to a place where civilization exists. And be ready to deal with a sudden loss of air at any moment.

Tire plugs only work in the tread area. Slime/Ride-On also only works in the tread area. And both "repairs" are designed for small punctures like a nail in your tire, not a sliced tire. I've heard of riders using like three mushroom plugs...but that was only to get somewhere closer to civilization so they didn't have to push the motorcycle as far. Not as a "fix".

Chris
 
Daboo said:
I'll try to answer the questions about Slime...and in a round about way, about Ride-On too.

Yeah, they get a bit tacky, but not like they don't work. As an example, I had a medium sized nail puncture the tire. I pulled the nail out in my garage. Air went whooshing out. Clearly the Slime wasn't working. I figured I could help it out. So I rotated the tire so the puncture site was at 6 o'clock. About a tablespoon of light green clear liquid came out. And then that was it. I'm guessing I had about 6000 miles on the tire by that time. I kept it on for about 14,000 miles before changing.

So while the Slime got tacky, it still stayed liquid enough to fix a puncture. Slime didn't make claims about tire balancing the last time I was on their website, but it operates on the same physics that makes Ride-On and Dynabeads work. I never felt an imbalance in my tires when I've used Slime. I have a friend who used Ride-On in his tires, and I changed his tires for him. He never complained about feeling any imbalance at all. And I never had a mess in changing his tires.

After as many tires as I've changed (lots because motorcycle tires don't last long...at the most a year for me, and sometimes less)...here's the logic diagram in words for how I will be approaching the next tire change on my XR.
  1. Mount the tires with no weight on the rim and simply aligning the dot on the sidewall with the valve stem.
  2. Test ride at freeway speeds. If smooth, quit. If not...
  3. Install Dynabeads. Problem solved.
Other options...
  • Install Slime/Ride-On. If I use Slime/Ride-On, it would be when I get the puncture, not before. And to use it would mean I'd have to remove the Dynabeads first.
  • Buy a tire balancer.
The known unknown (to use project manager speak), is that I don't know how well the XR's rims are balanced. For the Bridgestone T32s from my F800GT, and probably two sets before them of Continental RA2s and another tire before them, I haven't needed to use anything but Dynabeads on about two of those tires. That means that of 6 sets of tires, I've only balanced 2 of them. The others did not need balancing. Why do my rims on my F800GT and XR now have weights? And yet on the GT, I didn't need any additional weights after removing them? I don't know. But if my tires/rims feel balanced at speeds that would get my bike towed away and a ride in the backseat of an LEO's vehicle ...why do I need a solution to a problem that doesn't exist?

Chris
Click to expand...
I pulled the nail out in my garage. Air went whooshing out. Clearly the Slime wasn't working.
You didn't read the instructions. Ride On, and possibly Slime (I don't use it) direct you to pull the object out, then CAREFULLY ride/drive your vehicle to distribute the product, which will then seal the hole.
I used to love when it came time to change tires that had Ride-On in them.
I would use Ice Picks, Drill up to a 1/8 inch hole it them, screw nails and deck screws in them, then ride around the block etc.
Folks were at a loss of words when they checked the tire pressure, and I'd only lost 1-2 psi etc.
 
Igofar said:
Except nylon ties can damage the bead area on the tire, and they take up more space that you're trying to make.
Duct tape is completely flat, slippery when you add tire paste, and it's cheaper and easier to use.
I mounted this front tire on a member's rim without even using tire spoons.
If you want to find the easiest way to do something, ask a lazy person how to do it :rofl1:

20190924_221524_1592871183874_001.jpg
Click to expand...
I never knew about doing this. I have just been kneeling on the tire and working it on. Thanks!
 
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