Re-rubbering

Unfortunately no matter how good tyres are they still tend to wear out after a while and it's a bit of an inconvenience to this particular motorbicycle rider.  I guess the tyre manufacturers don't mind quite so much...

This time around my PR4's only gave just under 10,000km which is definitely not as good as I have done on them before.  The front possibly still had some life in it but the rear was starting to get the little cracks across the centre of the tread.

Now, I'm pretty good at putting down bad service or deals but this time around I have to give a bit of shout out to Cycletreads.  They had an Easter sale on and when I asked for a quote they came in $80 cheaper than the other one I got from Boyds where I have bought in the past (good service there too).  The tyres were delivered free and in 2 days - just like the gizmo below which I happened to have purchased a few weeks earlier...

This nifty little Chinese contraption sure made it easier to break the bead on the tyres - much easier than standing on my axe head...

And now for a story...I got the front tyre off very easily and after putting a new battery in the TPM sensor also got the tyre on the rim easily.  But then came trying to get the tyre on the bead...

TPMS

My poor little compressor simply could not dump enough air into the tyre (valve out for max flow).  It tried and tried but it was wearing itself out and deafening me.  Annoyed I jumped in the car and headed off to a service station to try there machine.  It seems that the modern compressors at gas stations useless for anything other than putting a few pound in...

Sitting on the forecourt of gas station #2 I rang our maintenance manager from work and asked if he had a better compressor.  Sure, he says and off I went around to his place.

Well, his compressor and then his compressor plus an extra air tank still couldn't get the job done - what next?

So, for some reason Cookie had some hair spray in his toolkit and we ended up spraying it inside the tyre and applying a naked flame...

This ended up not being quite as violent as we expected but the tyre nicely popped out onto the bead and I was on my way again.  A bit of a rigmarole but all good in the end and I got the wheel back on the bike before hitting the hay on Thursday night.

Friday night it was the rear's turn and after getting the wheel off it was time to try out the bead breaker again.

Piece of cake eh?  And it really only requires one good arm to do the job.  It also came in handy getting the last bit of the new tyre on over the rim too.  Very happy with this new tool.

And now, after a quick squirt to break-in the rubber, I'm very happy with the new tyres too :)

Pre-scrubbing...

Oh yeah, FYI: in 147,000kms of Connie ownership I've spent over $8k on tyres...

And now she needs front brake pads too...