If you feel like your motorcycle tires are out of balance, there could be many reasons why that is the case. It could be the air pressure inside the tires, or it could be the tire balancing beads inside your tires.
If you’re new to riding motorcycles, its possible that you never even heard of these balancing beads. Not only are they in your tires, but they are also an integral part of your bike, since it allows you to maintain perfect balance.
In this guide, we will go over the importance of tire balancing beads and how you can install them.
What are Tire Balancing Beads
Before we can even get to installing balancing beads in a bike, we need to go over what balancing beads are and what they do. Balancing beads are installed inside a tire with their main purpose being to help the rider maintain proper balance.
A balancing bead is a weighted sphere that goes inside a tire, and its main purpose is to maintain stability at high speeds. By maintaining balance, a balancing bead can also prevent uneven wear throughout the tire.
Even a single bead is essential to maintaining a bike’s balance, and depending on the tire size, there can be several in a single tire.
How to Install Balancing Beads to Balance tires
Tire balancing beads are an essential part of any wheel, and can generally offer a much smoother riding experience. And even though installing the beads can be easy, there are still a few things that you have to be careful of.
First, you need to find the right size of beads for your tires.
Second, you need to learn how you can properly install these tire balancing beads into your tire.
Finally, you need to learn how to check if your tire has the right amount of balancing beads inside and adjust accordingly.
After you can properly perform all of these tasks, you can confidently install balancing beads in your bike tire.
Removing the Valve stem
The first step to adding the tire balancing beads is to remove the valve stem, which will leave you with a hole to insert the balancing beads in to your tire with ease. Fortunately, this is a simple process, and you will need next are the beads and an injector bottle.
Why you can’t add beads from the valve stem
Of course, after you remove the valve stem, you need to wait for the tire to completely deflate. After it properly deflates, you can add your tire balancing beads. Now you might be thinking that you can even add the beads if you just take off the valve cap and add them.
However, that is not the case, since the valve stem core will stop each bead before it can even reach the tire. Therefore, taking off the valve core is essential to adding the beads.
Replace the valve stem and inflate the tire
After you add the beads, the next step for you is to replace the valve stem and then reflate your tire. You don’t even have to worry about things like tire mounting, since you can easily add the beads to your wheels of your vehicle with ease.
You can also add the beads directly from the bag while the tire is mounted, making installation very simple. After you reflate your tire, you will notice that your tire is now more balanced.
Beads can Settle
It is also important for you to understand that beads will eventually settle in a wheel, which makes them much less effective. And when they start to settle, you need to replace them as fast as possible to help keep your bike balanced.
Why you should use balancing beads
Balancing beads play a very important role in ensuring that your bike is able to maintain its balance. They are usually made of ceramic or glass, and are there to counteract the weight of the rim and tire.
They counteract the weight of the tire
One of the most obvious reasons why you would want to get balancing beads in your tire is because it can counteract the rest of the weight of the tire. The weight of the tire includes the rim and the rubber around it.
It can help reduce vibration
Another major benefit of these beads is that they can significantly reduce the vibrations of your bike when going at faster speeds.
By ensuring you keep your balance, the reduced vibration can also help you improve your handling. So when you add the recommended amount of beads into your tire, riding becomes much easier.
Improving the life of your tires
Another great benefit that comes with adding beads to your tires is that they can easily improve the life of your tires. Along with acting as counter weights to the rest of the tire, they reduce vibrations and generally reduce unnecessary movements that could lead to uneven wear. And as a good balancer, you can rest easy knowing that you don’t have to worry about any uneven wear on your tires as they rotate.
Tips to keep your tires in good condition
Keeping your tires in good condition is essential to ensuring that you can ride your bike safely. Along with checking which side of your bike is the right one, which is usually the other side, here are some general tips to keep your tires in shape.
Make sure your tire is inflated to the recommended amount
You always want to check your tires for wear and tear as often as possible. A cold tear could be a sign that you overinflated your tire, and uneven wear could be a sign that your tires are underinflated.
Check your tires regularly
Along with checking the pressure in your tires regularly, you also want to check for any signs of damage to the tire. General signs of wear and tear are usually not as concerning, but bald spots and cracks are. If you see these, you should purchase a new tire and not just a new tube to go under the mount. This new tire can also significantly affect the suspension and general safety of your bike.