Lamonster Approved Wheel Balancers for your Spyder

[Peteoz]

If you have that much corrective weight on your wheels and it was done by a dealer :yikes::yikes::yikes:...... friend ..they screwed you over ..... those tires are soo out of spec they are defective and should have been REPLACED UNDER WARRANTY .............. Mike :thumbup:

So Mike, are you saying that in your opinion PScott's vibrations would most probably be caused by bad tyres rather than the Centramatics? What would normally be the maximum amount of weight acceptable to balance Spyder wheels running decent car tyres?

Pete

 

[pjweimer]

SO Satisfied!!

I have been trying to resolve an admittedly small vibration in the front end of our 2014 RT Ltd for some time. Had the laser alignment done and that took care of most all of the problem. But there was still a bit left. Decided to go with dynamic balancing via balance beads. Bought them, installed 2 oz in both fronts and 3 oz in the rear, removed all wheel weights. Seemed to be smooth from about 50 mph to about 62 mph or so. But ukp to that range and after that range there was no perceptible difference.

So decided the beads were not my answer. Had been reading about the Centramatics and saw Lamonster's message about carrying them for the Spyders one week after I installed the beads.

Ordered the full set of Centramatics from Lamonster and installed them Saturday. Dismounted the front tires, removed the beads. Found that the right tire had quite a bit of mounting lub inside the tire (done at 24,000 miles, now have 31,000 miles) and all those beads seems to rather permanently adhering all about the inside of the tire. Cleaned all that up and remounted the tires. Placed the front Centramatics and wheels back on bike, aired tires to 20 psi and torqued the lug nuts to spec. Decided to leave the rear wheel as is for the moment.

Did a test run on a section of nearby road that is long, straight and flat and infrequently traveled by most folks. OMG! All the way up to 102 mph and back to 55 mph... smooth as glass. Now that was what I was after! Not that I frequently run that high a speed but it proved to me that the Centramatics were the answer for my bike.

I will have the rear unit installed when I need to replace that tire.

Thank you Lamont for offering this solution at a very good price.

 

[PMK]

Ok, I may or may not know what you mean, but does that apply to all spyders, and if it does, why am I having a problem when others are not.
So with the weights on the rim of the tires puts the balance closer to the same width as the tire, and wobble may have been the wrong word, more of tire out of balance bouncing up and down.

If the tire is hopping up and down, there is imbalance or it is not round. If the tire wobbles there is imbalance or the tire casing is shifted to one side, either from failure or it is defective.

As for the amount of weight installed, we may not like a lot of weight on the rims, but you post stated it was better prior to installing Centramatics.

Unless by some unexplained failure of the tire casing at the same time as the Centramtics were installed, there is no good explanation why when you properly installed Centramatics you now have vibrations. Your word of wobble can also be an imbalance that will make the fenders appear to move up and down. The speeds you mention are also often times where a car will feel tire imbalance. Going slow the imbalance is seldom noticed. The range of 45 ish to 65 ish often can be felt or seen as vibrating seatbacks or items. Faster it may smooth out, but can return at a higher speed.

You might have a look by raising the front wheel and spining it to check for the tire being somewhat round and the tread running fairly true. After that, and I know this is not per the instructions, balance those tires on a dynamic balancer, then reinstall with the Centramatics.

I image illustrates how to properly dynamic balance, the weight is applied to each edge, with the resulting virtual weight added balance point not in either location or often not along the centerline plane of the rotating object.

 

[jcthorne]

Ok, I may or may not know what you mean, but does that apply to all spyders, and if it does, why am I having a problem when others are not.
So with the weights on the rim of the tires puts the balance closer to the same width as the tire, and wobble may have been the wrong word, more of tire out of balance bouncing up and down.

If
you have a Kenda tire that needs 3.75 oz to balance, its a bad tire. A tire in this size range should use no more than 1 oz to balance. Second, the centramatics used on the Spyder can only counter up to 3 oz each wheel, not 6. 3oz is far more than should be required for any reasonable quality tire.

Next, if your wheels are generally balanced before you get the centramatics, I recommend installing them WITHOUT removing the weights. For new tires, remove all weights. For good quality tires, the centramatics should handle any small imbalance fine.

 

[PMK]

If
you have a Kenda tire that needs 3.75 oz to balance, its a bad tire. A tire in this size range should use no more than 1 oz to balance. Second, the centramatics used on the Spyder can only counter up to 3 oz each wheel, not 6. 3oz is far more than should be required for any reasonable quality tire.

Next, if your wheels are generally balanced before you get the centramatics, I recommend installing them WITHOUT removing the weights. For new tires, remove all weights. For good quality tires, the centramatics should handle any small imbalance fine.

Left front, 1 1/4 oz on the outside flange, 1.0 oz in the inner edge. The clock positions of the weights are not aligned inner vs outer locations.

No seen or detectable vibrations. Balanced by myself to within .1oz on a super fine setting.

Right tire is either better positioned on the rim or a better tire. Total weight is 3/4 oz and applied only to the inner edge.

The right wheel assembly also runs smooth with no visible or detectable vibrations.

If I were to move the weight positions, especially on the left side, to along the wheels centerline, as defined as a static balance, even though this can be done on the balance machine while spinning, the machine would indicate the heavy spot only. The Centramtic while it does offer constantly adjusting weight mass, the plane of rotation is kind of along the rims centerline and Centramatic type balancers may have difficulty on out of plane imbalance.

The best is always very few weights with a high quality tire that is round and true to begin with.

Centramatics on an install with a good rim and high end tire, possibly balanced prior to install would let the Centramatics work less and may be the smoothest setup. All that said, Lamonster accomplished the long term testing, advises removing all weights, so there must be solid reasons to do this.

 

[PMK]

I have been trying to resolve an admittedly small vibration in the front end of our 2014 RT Ltd for some time. Had the laser alignment done and that took care of most all of the problem. But there was still a bit left. Decided to go with dynamic balancing via balance beads. Bought them, installed 2 oz in both fronts and 3 oz in the rear, removed all wheel weights. Seemed to be smooth from about 50 mph to about 62 mph or so. But ukp to that range and after that range there was no perceptible difference.

So decided the beads were not my answer. Had been reading about the Centramatics and saw Lamonster's message about carrying them for the Spyders one week after I installed the beads.

Ordered the full set of Centramatics from Lamonster and installed them Saturday. Dismounted the front tires, removed the beads. Found that the right tire had quite a bit of mounting lub inside the tire (done at 24,000 miles, now have 31,000 miles) and all those beads seems to rather permanently adhering all about the inside of the tire. Cleaned all that up and remounted the tires. Placed the front Centramatics and wheels back on bike, aired tires to 20 psi and torqued the lug nuts to spec. Decided to leave the rear wheel as is for the moment.

Did a test run on a section of nearby road that is long, straight and flat and infrequently traveled by most folks. OMG! All the way up to 102 mph and back to 55 mph... smooth as glass. Now that was what I was after! Not that I frequently run that high a speed but it proved to me that the Centramatics were the answer for my bike.

I will have the rear unit installed when I need to replace that tire.

Thank you Lamont for offering this solution at a very good price.

I would expect the Centramatics to outperform beads, especially if the beads had obtained a fixed location from the tire install lube binding them together or in one location.

 

[Lamonster]

We have a 100+ units out there now and I've learn some things from the company and from end users. Because this has been such a long process there has been information that has been crossed between the different folks I've worked with on this. I now have one guy I'm dealing with and he was able to school me on how these work, what they can and can't do and what it will do for the Spyder.

First off he's amazed that a "motorcycle tire" would need so much weight. When they deal with motorcycles they deal in grams not ounces. If they have a tire that needs more than a ounce they replace the tire. Because of the limited space we have to work with the most product they can get in the Spyder ring is 3oz. If you have a wheel and tire that needs more than that he recommends zero balancing the tire as best you can and then using the Centramatic as a dynamic balancer. This will compensate for tire wear and adjust as needed to a wheel that's not quite right. So we now recommend that you see how many weights you have on your wheel and if it's 3oz or more to leave the weights on.

What Centramatics won't do is compensate for an out of round tire, a bent rim or a hub or axle issue. It may even make it worst. I also found out today that they can only get 2.5oz in the ring for a 14" wheel so as bad as our tires are they decided not to go forward with a kit for the 14" rim.

I still believe in the product, it solved a problem I couldn't get rid of and our Spyders run smooth as glass. This is not a magic ring that can defy physics but it will perform as advertised if your wheels and tires are within specs. If you have any questions feel free to call us at the shop and we'll be glad to work with you the best we can. We want you as happy as we are.

 

[IdahoMtnSpyder]

If
you have a Kenda tire that needs 3.75 oz to balance, its a bad tire. .

Yeah, but will BRP agree?

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

 

[Y Rider]

Bummer...

I was really hoping to use these on my 2011 RTL with 14" wheels. :sour:

 

[jcthorne]

Left front, 1 1/4 oz on the outside flange, 1.0 oz in the inner edge. The clock positions of the weights are not aligned inner vs outer locations.

No seen or detectable vibrations. Balanced by myself to within .1oz on a super fine setting.

Right tire is either better positioned on the rim or a better tire. Total weight is 3/4 oz and applied only to the inner edge.

The right wheel assembly also runs smooth with no visible or detectable vibrations.

If I were to move the weight positions, especially on the left side, to along the wheels centerline, as defined as a static balance, even though this can be done on the balance machine while spinning, the machine would indicate the heavy spot only. The Centramtic while it does offer constantly adjusting weight mass, the plane of rotation is kind of along the rims centerline and Centramatic type balancers may have difficulty on out of plane imbalance.

The best is always very few weights with a high quality tire that is round and true to begin with.

Centramatics on an install with a good rim and high end tire, possibly balanced prior to install would let the Centramatics work less and may be the smoothest setup. All that said, Lamonster accomplished the long term testing, advises removing all weights, so there must be solid reasons to do this.

Agree with all of this but do not believe the testing was done by Lamont alone......Several of us have been working with Centramatics for some time on these. Lamont is the distributer for good reasons. Slingshot versions are in the works as well.

 

[jcthorne]

Yeah, but will BRP agree?

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

Has
little to do with it. BRP/Kenda are happy to let you go wobbling and vibrating down the road. Seems you already feel other wise. Replace the defective tire and move on. Its far cheaper than the balancer you already bought. Life is too short to sweat arguing over who is going to pay for the tire. BRP is locked into a contract with Kenda and will not change until it runs out.

 

[PScott07]

First off, thanks for all the input . Like I originally said I did not have the experience to know how much weight should be used to balance a tire, now I have a better under standing, and a little pissed off that my tires are so bad ,(OEM ) and so I don't know if they were set that way from BRP or my dealer. I have a good relationship with my dealer and would hope they didn't do this, I also under stand I'm not the only one who's tires are this bad.
Lamonster has sent me a message to be able to return these, and I appreciate that, but I will keep them, and I will replace the weights and run these tires until I replace them with better ones. Again thanks to everyone for your input and info. That's what I like about this community, I mostly lurk on here, because I can find my question already asked and answered . This time I just had to find out what was going on, so thanks again.

 

[PMK]

First off, thanks for all the input . Like I originally said I did not have the experience to know how much weight should be used to balance a tire, now I have a better under standing, and a little pissed off that my tires are so bad ,(OEM ) and so I don't know if they were set that way from BRP or my dealer. I have a good relationship with my dealer and would hope they didn't do this, I also under stand I'm not the only one who's tires are this bad.
Lamonster has sent me a message to be able to return these, and I appreciate that, but I will keep them, and I will replace the weights and run these tires until I replace them with better ones. Again thanks to everyone for your input and info. That's what I like about this community, I mostly lurk on here, because I can find my question already asked and answered . This time I just had to find out what was going on, so thanks again.

Good plan, but better plan is to get a car shop to rebalance the fronts accurately and use weights on the inner and outer edge of the rim. Can Am has a bulletin about doing this, but a good car shop can handle the balance work easily.

 

[Peteoz]

If
you have a Kenda tire that needs 3.75 oz to balance, its a bad tire. A tire in this size range should use no more than 1 oz to balance. Second, the centramatics used on the Spyder can only counter up to 3 oz each wheel, not 6. 3oz is far more than should be required for any reasonable quality tire.

Next, if your wheels are generally balanced before you get the centramatics, I recommend installing them WITHOUT removing the weights. For new tires, remove all weights. For good quality tires, the centramatics should handle any small imbalance fine.

So JC, just to clarify.......in your opinion, with my fairly new(1500km), balanced front Kuhmos, would I be better off removing the balance weights from the wheels or not?

Pete

 

[IdahoMtnSpyder]

If you have a Kenda tire that needs 3.75 oz to balance, its a bad tire.

Yeah, but will BRP agree?

Has little to do with it. BRP/Kenda are happy to let you go wobbling and vibrating down the road. Seems you already feel other wise. Replace the defective tire and move on. Its far cheaper than the balancer you already bought. Life is too short to sweat arguing over who is going to pay for the tire. BRP is locked into a contract with Kenda and will not change until it runs out.

Not sure why you say I feel otherwise. Sadly, what we have here is a difference of opinion as to what constitutes a defective tire. I agree with you that any front Kenda that requires that much weight to balance is considered defective by us, the owner community, and from what Lamont wrote above, the folks at Centramatic, and probably by the tire industry in general. Apparently, BRP does not consider a tire that far out of balance as defective. If they did they wouldn't mount them, and better yet, they would clamp down on Kenda to tighten up their manufacturing process. Either BRP doesn't care about tire quality, or they have a piss poor contract specification writer behind the contract with Kenda and they are solidly locked into having to buy s*** that fully conforms to the contract requirement. Just because Kenda is Chinese doesn't mean they can't build a proper tire.

Somehow, BRP needs to get the message that tires that are generally considered to be defective by normal tire industry standards, should also be considered defective by BRP. I don't buy the idea that Kenda can't build a more balanced tire at no more cost than what they're building now. It's a sorry situation that we are put into, the position of having to shrug our shoulders, toss the OEM tires into the dumpster, and move on. But that's what I did. BRP wouldn't consider a warranty replacement for my tires for the constant pulling to the right problem without first having the front wheels aligned by the dealer by the factory method. I chose to discard them after 14,000 miles, replaced them with the Contis, and kept my laser alignment untouched. My Spyder tracks beautifully now.

As far as the Centramatic balancers are concerned I have a hard time in my mind seeing, other than from the standpoint of convenience and ease of use, how they can be better than a proper spin balance. If experience overall shows that a good spin balance is needed 3 or 4 times during the wear life of a good tire because tire wear significantly affects balance, then I'll accept that the Centramatics would be a good investment.

 

[Peter Aawen]

I've been doing some research on Kenda tires, & it seems they CAN build pretty good tires! :shocked:SmartCars here in Aust run them, & their tires not only look better, they rarely seem to have any of the issues we have with tires! Kenda make bicycle tires & tubes, many riders swear by them as 'the best' tires & tubes available; & they make Fork Lift & Loader tires, very few problems reported there?! There's more examples like that out there, & it seems they get the bulk of the good stuff, while BRP & the Spyders we are buying more often get the crap & even potentially dangerous stuff?!? :dontknow:

 

[IdahoMtnSpyder]

One of the best sledge hammers, 1.5 kg, I've ever seen or owned is the one I bought in Finland in 1989. It was made in China!

 

[Peter Aawen]

....As far as the Centramatic balancers are concerned I have a hard time in my mind seeing, other than from the standpoint of convenience and ease of use, how they can be better than a proper spin balance. If experience overall shows that a good spin balance is needed 3 or 4 times during the wear life of a good tire because tire wear significantly affects balance, then I'll accept that the Centramatics would be a good investment.

It's actually the USE of the vehicle & driving on the road rather than tire wear per se that leads car & tire manufacturers to recommend that you get your wheel alignment & tire balancing done regularly throughout the life of your tires! Here in Aust, the recommendation is currently to get a wheel alignment & balance done whenever you fit new tires & then get them checked at least every 6 months or 10,000km; & also to always get them checked after a significant impact on a kerb or pothole etc - if an impact jars you so much that you hurt, even if only for an instant, then you should get your wheel alignment & tire balances checked!! :lecturef_smilie:

Here, we can access tire life warranties of up to 100,000km IF we comply with that regular balance & wheel alignment check regime, usually for a very reasonable cost - for the wheels on my 4WD's it's only $50 to check the balance on all the wheels (inc both spares) plus doing the w/align, so over the life of a set of 6 tires it's LESS than the cost of just one new tire!! And if you run Centramatics or similar, the balance requirement is waived & it's significantly cheaper for the w/a check alone!! I'd even go so far as to suggest that most Heavy Trucks & commercial vehicles that have a good safety & roadworthiness record here in Aus either already use Centramatics or similar devices, or they get their tires regularly balanced & their wheel alignments checked.... Just Sayin' :thumbup:

 

[jcthorne]

So JC, just to clarify.......in your opinion, with my fairly new(1500km), balanced front Kuhmos, would I be better off removing the balance weights from the wheels or not?

Pete

My
professional opinion is if the wheel/tire is properly balanced, there is no need to remove the weights and unbalance the assembly when installing the centramatics. When you go to install new tires, remove the old tire, all the old weights and mount the new tire with the yellow dot aligned with the valve stem and install with the centramatic.

 

[IdahoMtnSpyder]

It's actually the USE of the vehicle & driving on the road rather than tire wear per se that leads car & tire manufacturers to recommend that you get your wheel alignment & tire balancing done regularly throughout the life of your tires!

Makes sense. That's one of those maintenance admonitions I've read and heard many times, and almost as often as not, ignored. Shame on me, right? :lecturef_smilie: