New Tires, Self Mounted
After the
Oregon Desert Tour
it was definitely time for a new rear tire. My 2001 Ducati
ST2 came to me with an inexpensive tire with OK performance
and I wanted something like I had on my 1998 ST2. I also
wanted to tackle doing the work myself. After spending hours
pouring over the internet I ordered a
Diablo Strada Rear Tire
.
The only things that had me worried as a first time tire
changer was breaking the bead, seating the bead and
balancing the tire. My original KLX 250S tires were not
balanced and I didn't want that feeling on the ST2. I ran
across
Dyna Beads
as an alternative to stick-on weights and I was sold. Other
various
sites
and
youtube videos
convinced me that I could break the bead without expensive
equipment and that my compressor was more than capable of
seating the tire.
Here is the bike with the tire removed. No big surprises here
except the shop manual doesn't say what size the axle nut is
(30mm) and I had to go buy one.
I thought about building a home-made bead breaker, but I
found that my largest C-clamp would fit around the tire and
it worked great for breaking the bead.
Here you can see the end results next to the old tire -
definitely time for a change.
Total time to change the tire was about 3 hours. Mostly
because I was being careful and it was about 98F. I expect
next time it should take me about an hour. The Dyna Beads
seem to work great.