Newer member bought a 1980 KZ650ltd

I have had my bike for around 2 weeks or so. I have been doing a lot of reading and minor work on the bike. Tank cleaning, petcock rebuild, carb overhaul, points, timing, valve clearence and so on. Bike has 10k on it with custom paint.

All it needs now is new tires the old ones are a little hard and have some cracks. Has anyone ever put a tire on with the hand tool or am I better off spending the $18 a piece to have them mounted for me?

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Nebraska
1980 KZ650ltd

Post edited by: cfendrick, at: 2006/08/01 17:25

if its only $18 each, I'd just have em mounted and balanced..mounting and balancing your own tires without the same tools the shop has availiable is asking for a headache..mounting isn't so bad, but balancing is.

If they are easy to put on then I will do it myself. The shop will charge $8 to balance them if I put them on.

You can save so much $ buying tires on line but then everyone chages you double to have them installed or won't do it at all.

Welcome. Nice looking bike.

I've never changed a tire, always had a shop do it. I don't have the right tools either.

I wouldn't say its "easy" but its do-able...personally, I wouldn't mount my own tires if a shop will do it for $18..figure on atleast an hour-2 hours per tire unless the beads on the old tires break loose real easy (yeah, right..) :S

I have mounted my own tires, front and rear, and I can tell you that if you can get it done for $18 per tire, have the pro do it. Even with decent tools (hand tools, not a power tire changer), it is A LOT of work, and takes too much valuable time. I did it myself because the shop wanted $35 to mount each tire, plus balancing.

Contrary to what you stated, the balancing part is the easy part. You DO NOT need any fancy spin balancers to do a superior job. In fact, hand balancing on a suspended axle is claimed to produce a BETTER result. Take a look in the archives and you will see a few good detailed posts on mounting and balancing. Mounting = hard work; Balancing = fast and simple job.

I guess the balancing always seemed harder to me, since everything I've hand-balanced or trued as ended up worse than when it started :blink:

Jeez, $18 apiece is an awesome deal. Take it!

del