Venting about Tire wear and alignment...

[Ddub]

Debated on posting or not posting this. I am a casual member of this forum, so I don't post anything unless I have something to contribute. By the time I read most posts they have been answered by people that have more knowledge about these bikes than I do. Anyway, I got my bike laser aligned by a member of this board. I will not call him out but if he wants to contribute to this thread, he is welcome. After having this done, I took a three-thousand-mile trip to Colorado and back. Now I have to say this is my first (Spyder 2017 RT Limited), so I have no previous experience on how they are supposed to handle. Been on two wheels for 40 plus years and only got the Spyder due to age. Trip out seemed ok just twitchy. Trip back was Hell. Could not get over 60 and hold on to bike. First noticed wear on the tires in New Mexico when I sat down on the curb to clean grass and bugs from the radiator screens. Ok so I made it back to my wife's father's home in Greeneville TN and the tire was showing cord. Decided to leave bike there and have wife come get me. Meantime I rode up to BajaRon's (only 10 blocks away) and have the bike looked at. Daniel came out to look at it and found the nuts loose on the right tie rod. The inside nut was backed off and the outside was finger tight. I drove back to Greenville the following Friday with my trailer to get the bike and took it up to BajaRon's and got two new front tires. I would have had them do an alignment too but they are not set up yet to do them. Bike now sits on my trailer in the garage waiting for a dealer north of me to give me an appt. for front end aligned. I am not sure the reason for my post is other than to let me vent and to say know your bike and who you are dealing with. I have attached pics of the tires before and after. The right wore bad across the tread and really bad inside. The left wore all the way across the tread as in scrubbing. Oh, and I add the person that did this looked the bike over and commented on its good condition. Thanks

 

[RayBJ]

You're lucky you caught it before a blow-out! These episodes are what keeps me wary of 'professionals'. No one is going to care for MY toys more than ME!

 

[CopperSpyder]

Sorry you had to go through that. Get a good Laser alignment by someone who has experience. You do have a nice-looking machine there. I hope the new alignment works well for you!!

 

[BajaRon]

We are hoping to have our alignment system set up by the end of the month. It might have been sooner but we will be gone for several days to the Spyders in the Ozarks event. We've got the hard part done. The lift has been modified and works well. We are just so busy doing work on bikes that we find it hard to complete our own projects.

The sad part about this story is that you may have had a very good alignment. But not setting the lock nuts was a bad deal. I can imagine that the handling on your ride was extremely bad.

The moral of this story is. If you think something is wrong with your ride. Get it checked out. The alternative can be hazardous.

 

[Peter Aawen]

Can I ask what tires you're running? And how many miles had they done before you got the alignment done?? :dontknow:

Here's just a few things that you may not be aware of which may (or may not... ) have some bearing on this....

I know of quite a few owners, myself included, who even with a 'reasonable' original factory alignment, didn't manage to get anything too much more than 3,000 miles out of their original OEM Kendas, largely because so many of those poor excuses for black round things to keep the metal off the road are just sooo poorly made to start with; so the fact that you've got better than 3,000 miles before wearing them thru to air is a pretty big plus to start with; but on top of that, many Spyders leave the factory &/or the Dealer with absolutely appalling alignment & often shoddy tires to boot, so they are very twitchy to ride & handle like crap right out of the box!! :banghead:

And then when their new riders, often especially those coming from 2-wheelers with years of experience, try too hard to make their Spyders do what they expect in the way of ride & handling, steering, etc, instead of just relaxing into it and learning to adapt to the Spyder in order to get the best from it, that twitchiness & poor handling can become a whole lot worse, and the tire wear (of any make of tire!) suffers as a result!! :sour:

On top of that, some of those OEM Kendas are quite likely to wear pretty much the way you've described anyway; even good quality a/mkt tires that've done anything much more than saaayyy, 500 or so miles with poor alignment are very likely to continue to wear badly in the manner they've already started to wear, and once started, it's extremely difficult if not impossible to align them in such a way to correct that excessive/abnormal wear without causing even more extreme wear!! And badly wearing tires are even more prone to being twitchy and vibrating in ways that can potentially 'loosen' even the tightest of jam nuts & tie rod ends!! :gaah:

So at least to me, for what little it may be worth to you at this stage of your experience, it really sounds like you were probably on the receiving end of one of those 'perfect storms' where for some bloody reason, pretty much everything lined up to create a really poor outcome for you regarding tire wear & ride/handling etc; and in my experience, frequently because of the poor factory/dealer alignment on new Spyders, this happens far more often than it should, especially if your Spyder is still running OEM Kendas!! :cus:

But for most of us, a good alignment and fitting some quality tires goes a long way to relieving a lot of the ride & handling concerns, then relaxing into it & learning to lightly guide the Spyder rather than trying to force it to behave like our former 2-wheelers goes a long way towards bringing on the 'Miles of Smiles' that so many of us now crow about so much; so as mentioned above by others a couple of times above, hopefully it'll help you too, and with any luck, it won't be long before you'll be looking back on all this as just a minor blip on your way to those 'Miles of Smiles'!! hyea:

Good Luck! :cheers:

Ps: Dunno why, but I can't see any pics of your Spyder &/or tires :dontknow:

 

[RangerRick]

I see no pictures also.

 

[Ddub]

Yeah Guys not sure why pictures not showing. They were, it looks like the post was modded by someone. Not sure I can add them back, Go figure. Anyway Peter they were OEM Front tires. Not sure of miles or if had been change prior to my buying but they had real good tread. I have heard and seen post of rear tires wearing out real fast and I understand the dynamics of why that happens but never seen anyone complaining about the front esp in three thousand miles. In fact most post I have seen say the fronts wear a lot better than the rear. As far as ridding the thing I have no problem with that quite relaxed on it until this happened. I guess you missed the part about BJR finding the tie rod nuts loose.

 

[EdMat]

Ddub, the pic's are showing in the first post. One thing to think about is once a tire starts wearing, the alignment can be adjusted to spot on, the tire will keep wearing in that pattern. It my slow down a bit, but its not going away. I wouldn't be too hard on the alignment until the tires are replaced and the Spyder alignment rechecked. Preferably with good quality auto tires, not crapendas.

 

[Peter Aawen]

...... Not sure of miles or if had been change prior to my buying but they had real good tread. I have heard and seen post of rear tires wearing out real fast and I understand the dynamics of why that happens but never seen anyone complaining about the front esp in three thousand miles. In fact most post I have seen say the fronts wear a lot better than the rear. As far as ridding the thing I have no problem with that quite relaxed on it until this happened. I guess you missed the part about BJR finding the tie rod nuts loose.

Now that the pics are there & I can see them, they look very much like the bog standard 'bad wear' patterns that MANY have reported here on their front tires over the years, especially those who were unlucky enough to get one or a pair of the 'not good' OEM Kendas!! And whether or not you get them seems to be 'the luck of the draw'.... :banghead: Back in the early days, up until about mid 2015, very few ever got a 'better set' of Kendas, front or rear, and IIRC there were even directions in the User Manual to strip & refit/swap the front tires rolling direction on the front rims every 10,000 miles so that they were running the other way on the rims & then fit them onto the other side of the Spyder to even out that wear!! :shocked:

Over the years since then, I will admit that the OEM Kendas, especially the fronts, have tended to gradually get a little better in the 'quality of construction' stakes and their wear, but even now, it's STILL very much 'the luck of the draw' whether you get a 'good' tire or set of tires or a bad tire/set.... And quite a few owners are still getting poorly constructed/poorly wearing Kendas, albeit with a lower but still significant number of FRONT tires wearing very much like yours, possibly for a variety of reasons - some of which include the construction of the tires being so randomly dodgy that the vibrations they produce in use ends up rattling the front suspension apart, which as I mentioned earlier, might possibly be causing the loose tie rod jamb nuts that you reported!! And then there's also the fact that once tires have started wearing rapidly &/or badly in a pattern like that, it's pretty much impossible to STOP them continuing from wearing like that! :lecturef_smilie:

So I wouldn't necessarily be blaming anyone who may have worked on your Spyder/done an alignment relatively recently for your tires wearing like that, cos there's a whole heap of other Kenda tires out there that've worn pretty much exactly the same way in much the same time frame/mileage that almost certainly didn't have that same person work on the Spyder's those tires were fitted to as well - there's FAR TOO MANY of them for any one person to have worked on them all!! nojoke Besides, up until fairly recently, I had close to a 7x5 trailer load of Kenda FRONT tires worn in very much the same way as those in your pics sitting in my yard, most with less than 10,000 miles total wear on them, along with another 7x5 + 1/3rd trailer loads of Kenda REAR tires worn out in the middle despite still having ample tread on the sides of the tread, mostly after significantly less than 10,000 miles wear on them.... And yet I'm pretty sure that whoever did your wheel alignment didn't touch ANY of the Spyders all those tires came off!

Sure, the alignment you had done MIGHT have had a little to do with the extent of that wear; he may have even left the tie-rod jamb nuts looser than they should've been, thereby possibly contributing juuuust a little more to the wear; but given the number of other Kenda Front Tires that've we've heard of here/I've seen first-hand that've been worn like that, my money for the major contributors to those tires wearing like that would be on:

1. the tires themselves being 'not that great to start with'; and
2. the factory/dealer set-up alignment also being 'not that great to start with'!! :cus:

Almost certainly, I reckon THOSE TWO THINGS are likely to have been the most significant contributors to your tires wearing like that! And beyond that, I've gotta agree with what others have mentioned above, especially EdMat & BajaRon. :thumbup:

Just Sayin' :cheers:

 

[Ddub]

Ok so what I am hearing from you Peter is that spite the fact I have ridden the bike a few thousand miles prior to getting the alignment and had no wear problems, the nuts left backed off and lose had nothing to do with this. EdMat I know and understand what your saying. Thats one reason the bike is still on the trailer and will not be ridden until it gets an alignment. The new tires I got from BJR cost way too much to risk setting up a wear pattern. I think the picture I attached to this reply is prior to ride. lighting not real good.

 

[Ddub]

Yeah I am going to let this post rest. I have said about all I need to say. I know I had good tires on the bike with no wear problem at the time of my trip and it was a screw up by the guy that left the nuts backed off loose. I am just glad I made it back home and nothing worse happened. We all make mistakes I know I do but at least I am not dealing with others lives. Bed time here in Charlotte and this old man need his sleep. Doug

 

[Peter Aawen]

Ok so what I am hearing from you Peter is that spite the fact I have ridden the bike a few thousand miles prior to getting the alignment and had no wear problems, the nuts left backed off and lose had nothing to do with this. EdMat I know and understand what your saying. Thats one reason the bike is still on the trailer and will not be ridden until it gets an alignment. The new tires I got from BJR cost way too much to risk setting up a wear pattern. I think the picture I attached to this reply is prior to ride. lighting not real good.

No, I'm saying that THAT ^^ is most likely what started the wear pattern you ultimately saw, even if you couldn't see it/didn't notice it before having your recent alignment done/your trip/New Mexico; and that once that wear pattern was started (probably well before your recent alignment/your trip) no alignment would really have much if any chance of changing that wear pattern. And that the nuts 'backed off and left loose' may not have been a result of the alignment per se, but regardless of if they were or not, they PROBABLY added very little if anything to hastening that wear! :lecturef_smilie:

So I wouldn't be too hard on whoever did that alignment, simply because it's very unlikely that the wear you have there is solely as a result of anything they did or didn't do, but I still wouldn't be riding the Spyder until the tires are replaced and the Spyder alignment rechecked. Preferably with good quality auto tires, not crapendas. :thumbup:

 

[Leaping1]

Ddub, PM sent. Thanks Leon

 

[ferrasr]

Glad you made it home safely. At the risk of getting beat up regarding tire types used I did want to pass on my experience with the Kenda OEM tires. From all the tire information on the Kendas I guess I fall into the group of one of the lucky ones with the original OEM tires. I just had them changed after our last 3500KM trip, I had 14,880KM on them. Fronts worn evenly across but the rear was the standard worn down in the middle. Fronts not down to the wear bars and could have likely gone another couple thousand KM's but I like to have tires changed as a set so I had my dealer change all 3 of them. Since my dealer will only install the Kendas I went with the K9's KR20. Tire pressures I ran were 20PSI front, 28PSI rear, 98% two up riding, 25% Freeway riding, 75% secondary highway roads. I will say first thing I notice was the new tires have 60% less balance weights on them, think that is a positive thing. Handling for the first 500KM seems good, no wondering and not twitchy so far. Will see how these tire wear.

 

[BajaRon]

It seems like we are missing the point here. With a loose jam nut. And the constant pressure under speed for the front wheels to splay out. Every bump and giggle, and every mile traveled will cause the tie rod adjustment to move ever so slightly in the same direction. This is why the OP's steering started off better and continually got worse. That adjuster was moving farther and farther away from where it should have been. As sensitive to alignment as the Spyder is, it doesn't take much.

The surprise here is not that the tires wore, under these conditions. Nor that the tire on the side with the loose jam nut wore much worse than the one with a tight jam nut. But that, as bad as the tire was, it wasn't a great deal worse.

While it is true that you can't fix abnormal tire wear that has already occurred. A correct alignment will begin a process of correct tire wear on the remaining tread and increase the life of the tire. The tire should not continue to wear abnormally with correct alignment. I'm not talking about cupping, which is a balance issue. Correctly balancing a wheel will not stop the cupping process once that pattern is set in a tire.

The only way to fix cupping is to shave the tire to smooth the tread.

 

[Terraformer]

I have yet to purchase a new Spyder, but from what I've been reading, the quality of care/capabilities of Can-am affiliated dealers and service centers varies greatly.

My question is, who is capable of conducting an alignment on Spyders? Is this something requiring special equipment (i.e., not for cars/trucks) or is this a pretty common thing? Where do I go to have an alignment completed - or to verify the alignment of a recently purchased Spyder from a dealer who says the unit is aligned?

Can any car place do this, or is this a special capability kind of thing? Sorry in advance for my newbie questions, there's a lot of great material on this forum!

 

[K80Shooter]

@Terraformer No just anyone cannot do the alignment on the Spyders.

Go to this link and search for a place near you that does the alignment. I saw 3 in Wisconsin but depending on where you live there may be one in a neighboring state that will be closer.
Also at some of the events there are sometimes someone there that can do it. I'm from Ga and had mine done while at the Maggie Valley NC event the 1st of this month.

Also ask here on this forum about any of the locations to see if someone might have used a certain location and if they would recommend them or not.

http://www.spydercomfort.com/dealers.htm

 

[BajaRon]

I have yet to purchase a new Spyder, but from what I've been reading, the quality of care/capabilities of Can-am affiliated dealers and service centers varies greatly.

My question is, who is capable of conducting an alignment on Spyders? Is this something requiring special equipment (i.e., not for cars/trucks) or is this a pretty common thing? Where do I go to have an alignment completed - or to verify the alignment of a recently purchased Spyder from a dealer who says the unit is aligned?

Can any car place do this, or is this a special capability kind of thing? Sorry in advance for my newbie questions, there's a lot of great material on this forum!

The ROLO laser alignment system provides the most accurate end result. The Spyder/Ryker are very alignment sensitive. Getting it exactly right can make all the difference. Dbub's initial alignment might have been very good. We will never know, at this point. But having left a tie rod adjustment lock nut loose, the end result was inevitable.

There are those who say they've been able to get an accurate alignment with a tape measure, etc. While I can't say for sure this is not possible. I know that Lamont and I spent many long hours using several different approaches. Some recommended by BRP tech's, some of our own ideas. We meticulously measured and adjusted, but were never successful. Lamont purchased the ROLO system and did several alignments over a short period of time, Each one came out great.

The beauty of the ROLO system is that it greatly exaggerates any misalignment. This makes it possible to be very precise. Though it still takes a skilled and patient technician to get the most out of the system.

I am sorry to say that we are still waiting for the final phase of our ROLO system install. It has taken much longer than ever imagined due to special circumstances at the shop and time available with our fabricator.

 

[old Timer]

I wish like heck there was a good service Ctr. with a ROLO System somewhere within 100-150 miles of Alamogordo, NM.............Much to my Surprise there are some 12 to 15 Spyders in Alamogordo.

 

[ARtraveler]

Tires are a special hot spot discussion topic here. I have a different take on the OEM Kendas, and have spoken about them many times. Since I have now sold both my Spyders, I will keep out of the discussion. Both the spyders I sold will have good tires for the next 10K miles is all I am saying.

The wear shown here, indicates a deeper problem than just the tires. Some of the blame has to do with the person performing the alignment. I have been through seven Spyders, and almost 205,500 accumulated miles, and have NEVER encountered a wear situation such as shown here. In, my humble opinion, there is more to this situation than just a particular tire brand. :bowdown: