I did my math wrong...

Are the weight stickers not 1/8oz.?

That would take 50 stick on weights to be 6 1/4oz.

I need to see a picture of that....

 

Again, with 1/8oz stick-ons, that is 24 stickers on one side, and 26 on the other.

I really want to see a pic of this....

 

I remember doing a friend's third tire change once (he had to get a dealer replacement on the road in between the 2 changes I did for him), when to my surprise, the weights I had put on two changes ago were still on there.

The dealer never bothered to take off the weights before balancing it again with the new tire installed.

Needless to say, there was a lot of weight on that rim when it came back to me. Started again with a clean rim and ended up with only a small amount of weight once again.

Rule of thumb on bike wheels is that any/all weight should be only in one spot. If it's in more than one spot around the circumference, you might have a balanced wheel assembly, but you've just added extra weights to your wheel for no reason. If it takes so much weight that you have to load up both sides of the rim at the same spot with weights, you have a problem wheel or tire.

(By "one spot", I mean one localized area, not necessarily one piece of lead by itself. Spoked wheels frequently take weight on more than one spoke, but they should always be adjacent spokes.)

All the best,

Shane

 

Each weight is .25 of a ounce, there are 6 weight's on one side and 7 weights on the other and they are painted black to hide them.

 

I'd love to know how you tighten spokes on a cast wheel...


To the OP, that's still 3 1/4oz's, seems like a bit much.

 

You are correct, my math sux......

 

Even though I use Dyna Beads, I rotate the tire around the rim on my static balancer before seating the bead till I find the "sweet spot" where I get the least out of balance spot, then temporarily put on weights till it's real close, so I know how much bead it really needs - that "2 ounces for X size tire" can be way off either way. I just put in a half to a full ounce extra and it's good to go. Doubt many, if any, shops would take the time and trouble to do a balance that way; most just put the tire on randomly (lot of them don't have the dots) and slap it on the spin balancer. I've seen tires on cars with weights on a quarter of the rim, and seen them on the highway actually bouncing off the pavement, imagine that kind of imbalance on a bike... Like so many things, only way to know if it's balanced right is do yourself, or watch the guy doing it, and you won't get to do that in most shops.

Too much is anything more than you need for wheel weights. Could be that the tire's heavy spot was lined up with the wheel's heavy spot, and just rotating the tire on the rim might cut the weights by half or more. A perfect balance can take a lot of time and patience, probably won't get that in a shop. I've had tires that balanced fine just finding the right position on the rim.

 

My bike came from the factory with about 6-8 on each side of the wheel. That's 12-16 total on just ONE side. Seems like a lot to me. Would have made sense to rotate that tire 180 degrees or check the wheel/tire out.

 

When I was working as an auto mechanic I never put on more than 3 oz. If a tire needed more than that I broke it down and rotated the tire on the rim. But some mechanics are to lazy to do that.
On a motorcycle tire I would not want more than about 1-1.5 oz. If your tire/wheel combo has 6 oz, it has a problem. JMHO.

 

According to the Harley service manual, 3.5 ozs. per wheel is the max. If it requires more, then break bead and rotate tire 180 degrees and check again.