[rcannon409]

I had michelin do me one lien that back in 2010. My reply phone call said that was not an acceptable solution to a "potential safety hazard" and asked for their "safety" or "legal liability" department....A new tire was shipped out.

Try again, but use the attitude like, "Hey guys, I'm on your side with this one..just want you to tell me this situation is safe...." They wont do this in a thousand years, and it sort of forces them to either acknowledge and take responsibility for the problem, or ignore it.....It s a little bit of effort, but its fun.

I think they are trained to kiss people off on the first request at all companies.

 

[THEMANRACING]

About six months ago on my DL650, I mounted a new Michelin tire Pilot Road 3 - the first time I put on a pure street tire. From day one, it had an annoying wobble on hard deceleration and certain speeds above 85MPH. So mostly I didn't notice it but I knew it was there. I mount and painstakingly statically balance my own tires. At one point I reseated the tire and rebalanced it but it still had the same problem. I then took it to someone with a Snap-on spin balancer and it calculated the same amount of weight with 1/2" of where I had it placed. That too made no difference. I then statically checked the wheel for runnout and it was fine but the tire had a slight lateral deflection of 2-3mm. I had been an ardent Michelin tire fan and didn't want to believe they sold me a defective tire and it was the last thing I checked. When I contacted Michelin they suggested I take it to an authorized dealer. I didn't do that because I bought the tire online and even if a local dealer agreed and offered some kind of credit it would have been towards an inflated tire with installation costs. I called the online dealer where I bought it but because a few months had passed they were less than sympathetic (I would not have been either). I have since sold the bike but I learned a lesson that you have limited recourse when you buy a tire online and not all new tires are perfect - even from major brands.

I have seen several people complain about the braking stability of the PR3's. I had them on my VFR and loved them, but I have seen several people with negative comments. No doubt caused by the odd tread pattern.

I would have Michelin replace it, and see if it is the tire. It may just not work well on your bike, but without trying it out you will never know.

Like Rc suggests call them, and don't take no for an answer. Make sure they understand it is a NEW tire, and you expected better.

They are never going to help you with a 4,000 mile old tire...lol

 

[stevenvt]

Like I said I passed the problem on to the new owner of that bike. He doesn't ride fast or brake hard so he hasn't complained. I was in a bit of a weird predicament with the tire having been purchased online. Michelin wanted to stand behind the tire but through an authorized dealer. I don't doubt they would have given me a substantial mark down on a new tire but it would have still cost a bunch of money to replace a tire that was essentially defective - recycle fee, balance fee and partial credit on a new tire at full list price. No thanks. Michelin's poor quality control is what finally opened my eyes to other brands. I have a Pirelli Scorpions on my Triumph which are very street oriented. So far the Pirelli has great wear characteristics and I will certainly consider this brand when it comes time to replace. In the past there is no way I would have ever considered Pirelli. In this day and age I find it inexcusable that a defect like this isn't caught before being shipped out..

 

[jhonrider]

Ok so before we deal with the physical aspect of wheel balancing let us first address a significant issue of Static wheel Balancing!!!
Unless you are balancing wheels from a vintage car with very narrow wheels, you SHOULD NOT !!! be using the static balance setting.
Tyre fitters will often use the static wheel balancing parameter because they believe it makes the process easier and quicker.Worse yet some businesses will use static wheel balancing to save on the amount weights being used in an attempt to improve profits.
Static wheel balancing is carried out using one set of wheel weights mounted in the centre of a wheel. Dynamic balancing on the other hand uses two sets of weights.
Now admittedly when balancing a wheel using the static wheel balance parameter, you may well be able to get the display on a wheel balancer to show zero on its imbalance readings, …… after all you have just balanced the wheel in a Static fashion
BUT !! this does not mean the wheel has been balanced correctly, in terms of modern day vehicles, it’s far from it!

 

[txhogcowboy]

Just a question @jhonrider or anyone else that might know, and y'all might be too young to remember, but there was a time they used to balance with the wheel/tire on the vehicle and would spin it up to 75+mph, what was that called? That was on cars and only slightly before I started being interested in motorcycles so have no idea if that kind of balance was ever used on motorcycles. But that kind of balance was awesome for cars. Absolutely perfect balancing. Why it went out I have no idea. Probably they oversold this newer dynamic stuff which by no means is as good. Maybe it went out because operator training required far too many hours. Or maybe mistakes might be a better word than hours. But I don't have any idea what that kind was called.

 

[rcannon409]

You know what happened with this? New technology allowed the imbalance to be detected at lower speed. That's about half of it.

The other half was safety related due to tires flying off balance machines. Thrown rocks, etc.

 

[txhogcowboy]

The other half was safety related due to tires flying off balance machines. Thrown rocks, etc.

I can believe technology changed things but personally I don't agree it resulted in better balance jobs. More like close is good enough.

But the type of machine I'm referring to was used with the tire/wheel on the car so everything about that assembly was being balanced which would include the bearings, not that they would throw things off that much but the potential is there. Now rocks being thrown, that I would agree with. But I can't remember what they called that machine they moved from one tire/wheel to another while mounted on the car. This was back in the 60's and maybe 70's.

I can't remember the last time I had it used on one of my cars but I do remember I had to ask them to do it with that machine because they used the new tech stuff and the first time I hit 75mph the car started shaking. Took it back and they used the one with the wheel/tire mounted on the car and found 2 of the 4 was off some. They made that correction and I tried it again and got up to 120mph without any shaking what-so-ever. Now they have it made by limiting cars to 95mph to start with.

 

[rcannon409]

I remember them.

Close enough really is good enough. Especially on a part that is constantly wearing,and changing. I balance my own motorcycle tires, just like the video shows. You have to be off by 2 or 3 ounces to feel it. It takes about 5 minutes to balance to the point where you are trimming 10 gram weights. It's fun to try and make the wheel perfect, although it's a waste of time. That's why those balance beads appear to work so well. It's just not as critical as it sounds like it would be.

If you ever get into a situation to where you are using scales, gauges ,balancing equipment, you end up with problem 2. Who says your balancer is accurate? If the balancer is going to be perfect, it would need to be calibrated on a regular basis. The more accurate it is, the more fragile it is, and that men's more calibration.

 

[rcannon409]

At some point, I decided I'm not paying shop priceless for tires. I bought aa cheap bead breaker and a cheap balancer.

The balancer is an axle that iis supported by bearings. I watched YouTube to get some idea of how to use it.

How accurate I needed to be? I had no idea, so I left the front wheel on my bike. It had been shop balanced, when new, but the tire was worn out. Just for fun, I stuck 2 ounces of weight to it, in a random spot and went for a ride.

I took the bike up into the triple digit area, and felt nothing. I do have a Scott's steering damper, but I had it turned to a very low setting .

At that point I knew my balance work was fine. It's really easy to balance to a point where you are trimming 5 gram weights to make them lighter.

Seriously, if a person balanced their bare rim, and bought name brad tires, you could forget balancing them and have no issues.

My Nina 1000 rear rim is interesting. You would expect the valve stem area to be the light spot.....or, maybe the heavy spot because there is extra material there. It's not. The heavy spot is a random spot .