Balancing Rear Wheel

Anybody else have trouble finding a shop that can balance the rear wheel on the Swing? Even my local Honda dealer can't balance it.

Did you buy the new tire from them? The reason I asked was when I had a old Harley, the H-D dealership would not mount the tire or balance the wheel unless you purchased the tire form them. Come to find out it is a legal problem.

thomphoto wrote:

Anybody else have trouble finding a shop that can balance the rear wheel on the Swing?

Are you trying to statically (slow speed) balance or dynamically (high speed machine) balance??

I mounted a new front tire on a Harbor Freight and some had a static No-Mar tire balancer ( http://www.nomartirechanger.com/products/9 ). They were able to get the balancing close but near the end it appeared to give conflicting information so it was declared "close enough"

Later I researched and purchased a static Marc Parnes balancer ( http://www.marcparnes.com/Motor_Scooter_Wheel_Balancer.htm SLW ) which I found to be very simple and very sensitive. I have balanced two tires on it ( 1 front and 1 rear darkside ), both times I was able to completely balance the tire till there was zero movement regardless of where you started the tire.

thomphoto wrote:

Even my local Honda dealer can't balance it.

My Honda dealer was able to balance my tires before I did them myself.

DennisB wrote:

Did you buy the new tire from them? The reason I asked was when I had a old Harley, the H-D dealership would not mount the tire or balance the wheel unless you purchased the tire form them. Come to find out it is a legal problem.

It's nothing to do with whether I buy the tire from them or not, it's that their equipment won't accomodate the rear wheel.
I bought the tires from a cycle shop locally, and he's the one who could not balance the rear. His balancer would not fit the wheel. He did the front with no problem.

Was it an issue with the diameter of the axel hole or the width of the rear hub he was having a problem with?

No prob here

Right on most Honda Dealers not being able (equipment) to balance scooter rear wheels-----but then...of course most don't balance smaller scooter tires anyway.


Using my 30 year old Hein Gericke static balance stand----remembering as I recall hole in SilverWing wheel is big-----I got pretty good static balance #1 new IRC tire---ran pretty good #2 OEM after repair #3 IRC back on after another OEM repair. All required some added weights and as bike went down road smoothly, guess I got it right

While what I did is not scientific---worked with some care. Over the recent years I have found tires from Taiwan require the least amount of added weight and often can be balanced adding none by moving tire on rim. Uniform build quality,

Looking back at Vespa years...don't think balance was worried about---Honda Helix never worried about balance on 10" rear.....and I had 4 Helix and did lots of miles on them (well over 160,000 miles), but did balance 12" fronts.

Just a little added: I guess designers never do their own tire work---70 aspect ratio are real bear to get off rim without tire machine-----but I bought longer 24" tire irons and heavier rubber hammer for these jobs.

John Grinsel

DennisB wrote:

Was it an issue with the diameter of the axel hole or the width of the rear hub he was having a problem with?

The width of the rear hub.