Back in the day, we used rosin core solder wrapped around the spokes.

explain your brake rotor please. Looks cool.

MotoBuddha wrote on 04/17/11 at 15:01:41:



How much ?  Part # ?  fun factor rating?

LANCER wrote on 04/18/11 at 03:30:44:


EBC Pro-Lite MD3017LS
About $160
Not as much fun as a re-profiled cam, if I had it. (hint, hint)

I've seen various dynamic balancing systems in automotive, motorcycling, and aviation applications.

They all work.

I used PJ-1 Balance Plus ever since I read an article in Motorcyclist or Cycle World back in the 80's.  They tested the stuff, starting off saying there was no way that putting goop in your tires was a good thing.
    They changed their minds.  They loved it after a few weeks.  
    They even deliberately put some weight on a spoke to see if the goop would balance it out.  It did.  
    They also liked the idea that as the tire wore, it would stay in balance automatically.  Most tires, when perfectly balanced mechanically (initially), usually lose some of their balance gradually as the tire wears.
    There were three downsides:
             1. Everytime you started up the bike and took off, it took a few hundred yards for the goop to distribute itself, so it felt out of balance (it WAS) until the stuff spread itself around.  
             2. The stuff is also a leak/puncture sealer, so you are duty-bound to inspect your tires more often because you might be riding around with a puncture with nail in it and not know it because the goop seals well.  
             3. Makes for a messy time when you change tubeless tires.  Adds 10 minutes to the job to wipe the old PJ-1 off the rim.

A guy at work uses Dyna Beads in all his street vehicles, two, four, and six wheeled.  Swears by it.  Brags about not ever having to pay for balancing, and having tidy looking wheels devoid of clumps of weights.  Says he always had cupping of some sort or another on the tires of his larger vehicles until he found out about Dyna Beads.

Another buddy I haven't seen for a while always mounted his own tires (bikes and cars), and would put in 12 or 15 oz. of anti-freeze.  Yes, antifreeze.  I told him about PJ-1, and he said he didn't want the self-sealing feature.  He wanted the dynamic balancing (which he said worked a lot sooner than PJ-1) but didn't want to possibly be riding around with some schrapnel in his tire not knowing about it.

Since I am a little concerned about the appearance my soon to be RYCA CS-1, I think it would be nice to not have clumps of lead or solder hanging on to a spoke.  Some sort of dynamic balancing would at least tidy up the appearance of the wheels.

The ultralight community has been using mercury-filled dynamic prop balancers for decades.  Vibration is a VERY big deal with them because when things start cracking or falling off your 250lb aircraft, your angst level goes way up.  Dyna Beads and the like work on the same principle as these circular prop balancers.

    One trick I have used before (that I used this time when mounting the front tires on our CS-1 projects) was to mount the tire, put the tire/wheel on an axle, spin the tire just a little, and note how rapidly it settled.   I then deflated it, popped the beads off the rim, rotated the tire relative to the rim 90 degrees, reinflated, spun it again, and noticed how rapidly it settled.
    After doing this a few times, I got it to where it would settle very slowly -- indicating to me I had mostly canceled out the built-in imbalance in the wheel, tube, valve stem, nuts, valve cap, rim strip, and tire.  So, now, no matter how I choose to balance the wheel/tire, it will have less imbalance to cancel out.  
    The last time did this a few years ago with a GS850G, I got the front tire such that no weights or goop were needed at all.  Smooth ride for the life of that tire.
   

So,... now I have to decide,.. PJ-1?  Antifreeze?  Dyna Beads?   Slime?

I always wondered if a cross drilled rotor eats brake pads quicker. Also wonder what the difference in performance would be.

That new wheel looks great in there. I was looking at the picture of the rims a few pages back.  Will that GS450 front rim lace up to the Savage hub?  Is it the same width, 2.15 I think it is?  I haven't laced a wheel since the sixties and back then all the British bikes used rims and spokes from the same supplier and had limited hub sizes so interchanging was easy, very few questions to ask and they would fit every time.

I think the 18 inch rim looks good but I am unsure about the angles for the spokes, I don't know if different manufacturers use different angles now and where would a person get an 18 inch rim that would fit and where do you find shorter spokes.  I would prefer to lace my own to save money and also because I like to do it myself.

MotoBuddha wrote on 04/20/11 at 05:42:15:


I found the answer at the Dynabead site. About 1oz.  of beads for a tire my size. So I ordered some. I will perform my own test and add it to the pile of pro and anti opinions.