Darkside wheel balancing

TonyMac

Supercharged
Joined
Mar 22, 2007
Messages
448
Location
Howell, Michigan
Having spoken to a several Darkside Captains I am aware that getting the rear wheel/tire balanced after mounting is posing a problem.

This maybe of interest to them..............

ttp://www.ride-on.com/newsDetails.asp?nid=54

Balanced and a no puncture guarantee!
 
Whoops duff link


Whoops duff link, here it is..............


6/28/2008 - Sterling, VA
How Does Ride-On TPS Help to Reduce Vibrations
This is one of the most common questions asked by our distributors and customers. Without getting too technical, this White Paper is an attempt to describe the forces generated by spinning bodies (i.e., tires spinning around the axis), the effect upon the tire, and, in turn, on the Ride-On TPS sealant inside the tire.

First a few definitions:

Centrifugal force (from Latin centrum "center" and fugere "to flee") is a term which may refer to two different forces which are related to rotation. Both of them are oriented away from the axis of rotation, but the object on which they are exerted differs.

Force which is oriented toward the axis of rotation is called a centripetal force.

Centrifugal force is an outward force on a body rotating about an axis, assumed equal and opposite to the centripetal force and postulated to account for the phenomena seen by an observer in the rotating body.

•A real or "reactive" centrifugal force occurs in reaction to centripetal acceleration acting on a mass. This centrifugal force is equal in magnitude to the centripetal force, directed away from the center of rotation, and is exerted by the rotating object upon the object which imposes the centripetal acceleration in accordance with Newton's Third Law of Motion.

Centripetal force and centrifugal force is the action-reaction force pair associated with circular motion. According to Newton's First Law of Motion, a moving body travels along a straight path with constant speed (has constant velocity) unless it is acted upon by an outside force. For circular motion to occur there must be a constant force acting on a body, pushing it toward the center of the circular path. This force is the centripetal (“center-seeking”) force. For a planet orbiting the sun, the force is gravitational; for an object twirled on a string, the force is mechanical; for an electron orbiting an atom, it is electrical. The magnitude F of the centripetal force is equal to the mass m of the body times its velocity squared v 2 divided by the radius r of its path: F=mv2/r. According to Newton's Third Law of Motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The centripetal force, the action, is balanced by a reaction force, the centrifugal (“center-fleeing”) force. The two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. The centrifugal force does not act on the body in motion; the only force acting on the body in motion is the centripetal force. The centrifugal force acts on the source of the centripetal force to displace it radially from the center of the path. Thus, in twirling a mass on a string, the centripetal force transmitted by the string pulls in on the mass to keep it in its circular path, while the centrifugal force transmitted by the string pulls outward on its point of attachment at the center of the path. The centrifugal force is often mistakenly thought to cause a body to fly out of its circular path when it is released; rather, it is the removal of the centripetal force that allows the body to travel in a straight line as required by Newton's First Law.

Newton's Third Law of Motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

How does this all apply to balancing with Ride-On TPS?

In a perfect world where all tires and wheels are perfectly balanced, a spinning wheel and tire will have equal centrifugal and centripetal forces all the way around the tire. Thus balancing of the two counteracting forces would give the rider a nice smooth ride, and allow the tires to wear evenly (providing there were no problems with the alignment of the vehicle).

Since we do not live in a perfect world, all wheels and tires available to the mass market have imperfections that cause an uneven distribution of weight around the perimeter of the wheel and tire.

Conventional lead weight balancing attempts to balance the forces by the placement of a lead weight fastened to the wheel which compensates for a heavy spot on the opposite side (180 degrees) of the wheel and tire. This solves the problem for a while until the wearing of the tire (over the course of several thousand miles or kilometers) creates another heavy or light spot somewhere else on the perimeter of the tire and necessitates another balancing of the tire-wheel assembly to correct the new imbalance.

How this applies to tires and wheels and to Ride-On is as follows:
When a tire is spinning, centripetal force is created. The centripetal force (the inward force towards the axle) is in balance with the centrifugal force that is going outwards radially away from the spinning axle.

If there is an imbalance in the tire and wheel assembly in the form of a heavy spot on the tire or wheel, it creates an increase in the centripetal force at the heavy spot. Since both the centripetal and the centrifugal forces have to be in balance (Newton’s Third Law), the excess centripetal force created by the heavy spot of the tire exerts a directional force on the Ride-On gel inside the tire. Ride-On tire sealants have been specially formulated to be able to move inside the tire and not only seal the liner but also be a force cancelling mass to help reduce vibrations. In this instance, the Ride-On tire sealant attempts to correct the imbalance by sliding internally to the opposite side of the place of static imbalance and counteracting it to balance out the forces. This is called hydrodynamic balancing.

The Ride-On tire sealant is a unique tire sealant gel that is formulated as a pseudoplastic. This means that Ride-On responds to shearing (gravitational) forces created by the spinning tire by reducing viscosity. This reduced viscosity allows Ride-On to move and readjust its position inside the tire in response to the centrifugal and centripetal forces that have been placed upon it. Once the shear forces have been removed (in other words, the tire stops spinning), Ride-On instantaneously regains its viscosity and gel quality. This allows it to stay in place and not drip and drop down to the bottom of the tire.

With Ride-On in your tires, the problem of having to rebalance your tires goes away. As you drive, the sealant is sensing the forces created by the spinning tire and the gel makes adjustments from inside the tire to balance out the centripetal and centrifugal forces.
 
I am seriously thinking about going over to the dark side after my second flat with the paper thin Metzler. I swear, if you ran over a cotton puff the Metz would loose.

Has anyone tried just simple static balancing? I've been doing that for years with regular MC tires and it works fine for that.

The hole for the axle in the stock R3 wheel is too small to enable you to put it on a regular balance machine.
 
I would think you could find a bike shop somewhere that would balance it. They usually wont mount it on the rim but balancing is another deal. I know a couple of them around this area that would.

Oops . . just read TonyMac's earlier post and maybe this area is just an exception to the rule
 
Had a Riken Raptor 205 60 16 installed Friday. No easy task as finding the one who will mount it to be the challenge. I thought I would give the remover of the old Metz a break by killing it. Removed tread by the usual method of burnouts until steel sparks fly, and drilling a large hole in same to let 1 container of Slime and 2 large cans of Fix-a-Flat escape and boy did it. My next question to my dealer,(tire remover) is how many Metz they remove with that stuff inside of them. Yes it is a chore and a messy one to be sure. They charged me extra for the pleasure as well. Tomo, don't wait too long my friend. I got the 205 because of the size of the chicken strips on my old tire (usable width) and the taller to match the original. After 200 unballanced miles I don't feel it needs it yet, no vibration at all to 80. Don't know about the other darksiders but that Metz was a bear to turn thinking it was low of air again. Once I get off the flat in a turn she is a feather. The Kicker is riding it like you stole it without worring about the next 300 bucks. Rear break pads, gas and maybe a throttlecable.
 
I don't balance my motorcycle tires, and I haven't ever. Normally I go through two sets of tires a year at least and have always mounted my own. I always line up the painted dot (not with Avons, they don't mark the light spot on their tires) on the sidewall with the valve stem and mount the tire. If it vibrates I'll slide the tire around the rim (gotta break the bead, first), only had to do this once. I mounted both of the tires currently on the Rock and just today hit 125-130 mph and had absolutely no shakes or vibrations. I'm not saying that you should follow in my footsteps or take this as advice, but given the reduced mass of a motorcycle tire vs. a car tire, even with imperfections in the manufacturing, I've never really found a need to balance bike tires. Most everyone that I have ever mounted is smooth up to 130 or so (maybe higher) and that is about as fast as I care to go. (BTW, I am running a Toyo Proxxes T1-R in 245-50/16, so yeah, I'm a darksider and it ain't balanced either.)

As a matter of fact right after I bought my Rocket used with 5,000 miles on it I needed to get a rear tire for it. And considering that I had been confined to a wheelchair just two weeks prior to buying it and was not able to get up and down to mount it, I let Triumph of Chattanooga mount a new Metzler for me. Les, the service manager, told me when it was time to pay that they could not fit a Rocket rear on their tire balancer and had not balanced a single rear for the Rocket that they had sold. No one had ever brought a tire back to them for balance issues or even complained.

Dang, I miss Triumph of Chattanooga, I wish they were still in business.

Joe
 
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