Changing a Tire

All right, after covering a basic maintenance and what to do before you swing your leg over a bike on our old four ultra classic. Um, everything checked out on that one pretty good. Uh But we thought we'd give you an example of one that's in dire need. As you can see this front tire in this bike, it's much different from the inspection we did compared to what was on that bike. This one here is pretty bald and bald tires like this mean a couple of things they're dangerous. Um, they could uh fail on you, they could blow up while you're going on a road fall apart, but also your stopping power is gonna be drastically reduced if you hit that front brake, if there's any kind of wetness to the road or some grease or oil, this thing's gonna slide really quick and it's gonna cause an unsafe uh dangerous situation. So we're gonna do uh, before we want to swing our leg over this bike. Now is we went to Dennis Kirk and got ourselves a nice new 21 inch tire from Avon that's gonna go on this bike and we're gonna show you how to take the wheel off, take the tire off and replace it with some fresh rubber and have this thing ready to get back on the road. So we're gonna get a lift going here and get this thing up on the lift and we'll come back and get after it. All right. Now that we got this 1946 knucklehead bike up on its lift here off the ground. We can get at the tire here and wheel. We're gonna take this wheel off. We're gonna demount this whole uh war out ball tire and get it ready to put on a new one. So the first step with this is you wanna get your axle. Oh, so you can drop the tear. First thing we'll do is get our axle net off, loosen that and then we carefully tap our axle through. So now we got, this is a drum brake style system. See the drum always do a little inspection too while you got it off. That looks good. There's not a lot of scoring our brake pads look good. Nice and thick. No worries there. So now we want to get ready to dissemble a tire. I'm gonna get a table set up here. We can get this up and get a better look. We're gonna demount this tire and get ready to put on some fresh rubber, so we'll be right back. All right now that we got our wheel off the bike got up on the table here. We're gonna attempt to take the old rubber off and put new rubber on. So we'll start by letting the air out of this tire, pull our valve stem cap, pull the valve stem out. All right, once you get the air up, you see it's nice on these bigger tires that the bead breaks off pretty easy on some of the other type tires or rears or the bigger ones that you might need a machine to actually break the bead. And I like using just a little bit of tire lube, kind of get everything looped up good so the tear can slide off as easy as possible. Um, basically you're just gonna take a tire iron, get under the beat of the lip, raise it up, we're gonna work our way around so we get one to, but sometimes it's nice to have three of them in there and then you can go one or two, three and once you get it started, you can see now it starts to hold itself off. Yeah, tire machine does make life a lot easier, but this should be ok. We hold that there and we'll just keep working our way around as you can see. Now, the beads popping up pretty easy. Now, even if the inner tube wasn't bad, usually it's good practice to put a fresh one in each time you change it and it's always good to have a spare in case you puncture one in the middle of this process. Sometimes you have an oops, we know set that one aside. We don't plan on reusing it, but if it's not broken, I'll hold it on. It's just a spare just in case you ever run into a problem where you neither one and didn't have a brand new one. But I will test this. I'll fill with air and make sure it doesn't leak and inspect for any damage. As long as it looks like it's in good shape. Potentially it could get reused. Probably won't. But like I say, just for the heck of it, if it's not popped or leaking, no damage, I might as well keep it around. All right. Now, we got to get the rest of the tire up. Here we go. Well, old one's off, send that one to the recycling center. Now, we'll see how it goes. Getting a new one on. All right. So this is a 21. It's a unidirectional so it doesn't have a arrow telling you one way or the other. So I can run it either way. It won't matter. Some tires you want to really look at and make sure if it tells you that there's an arrow showing which way it needs to go, you need to index it properly. But on this old school stuff, it was pretty universal. Now, this is a new tire. It's not really warmed up which can be an issue. A lot of times I like to always say take the tire and put it out in the sunshine, let it really warm up the rubber. So it flexes easier. So we'll see this might fight us. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully we can get it on without having to take some time and use a tire machine. Oh, where here we go. One side's on mm. Valve stamp hole is right there. This rim already has one installed. But remember to always use a rim strip, rubber rim strip. What that will do is it covers up all the sharp points of the spoke nipples and any impurities that could be on that rim to help save your inner tube from getting punctured. So if you don't have a rim strip on a tube to just make sure you get one put on, they look like this, you can get them through Dennis kirk.com. Now we're gonna open up our new tube. These are center mont style tube. So the same thing I'm gonna give it one more. What weather lube? Just to get it. So it slides. You don't want a tube to bind or pinch that will cause problems. Nice little soap, water tire lube makes it slippery. So hopefully it'll slide off and go into place without binding up and puncturing itself start by getting the valve stem in first. This could be a little bit of a challenge. Once you get it started. You can put the not on it to hold it from popping back in. OK? The organ carefully tucked the tube into the rim. Being careful not to pinch it. Keep it as straight as possible. You don't want this thing twisted in there because that will cause it to pop. And I can feel that blue by putting is helping a lot allowing it to slide in. Nice and easy. OK. So now what I wanna do before I put anything else in or try to see it, I wanna add a little bit of air to this. I'm gonna expand the tube that will allow it if it is bound at all or pinching to kind of work, wake itself up and straighten out. Then I'll let the air back out, do that one or two times. Let this uh, tube get seated, then I can worry about trying to mount the rest of the tire. So I'm gonna go grab an air hose and the chalk and I'll be right back. All right. Now I got my ear. What we're gonna do is we're gonna add air to the tube, let it expand and contract a few times to, uh, get itself squared up. So I'm gonna put my air truck on. And again, what that does is it expands the tube. If there's any binding or twisting that can straighten itself out. Ok. Now that we got the tube, uh we aired it up, let it down. Now, we can tighten up our locking nut here with a 12 millimeter that will suck the tube up tight, snug it up so it won't move or bind or pinch. And then I always do one more inflate and deflate, let the air come all the way out. And one last tire lube here get everything nice and lubricated so it can slide in and pop in without too much force. They can fight you if you don't have them set up correctly right now, start with the one side carefully, turns, start popping it in and you want to really be careful. You're not pinching the tube at this point where your tire iron touches, that'll put a big hole right in your tire right away and we're on so, so far, so good. Now we're gonna do the same thing again where we add air, let this tire contract and expand as we let the air in and out one more time. And at this point, I'm going to hold the air for a minute just so I can listen. If you puncture your tube or tore your tube, you will know pretty quick right now. You'll hear it start to hiss. You'll see pressure dropping. You wanna verify your tube is in good shape. You didn't puncture, it didn't jeopardize anything before you move on. You don't want to get this thing all mounted back together and then realize you gotta take it all off because you have a bad tube and this is holding, pressure hasn't dropped at all. So I know we're good. So now I can reinstall my valve stem. All right. Looking at the ratings on this one, it says it's rated for about 42 pounds P si cold. And that's quite a bit for a chopper tire like this, these little tall, skinny ones. I like to run about 25 to 30. Give myself a little bit of squish to it. I will check it again once it's on the bike for good. But for now I'm just gonna put in about 30 pounds. All right, we're at 30.3 or so. At 29 here we go. Take that off. We're good with our air, get that out of the way. And another nice thing when you use the uh soapy water technique or the lube, it will bubble if you have any leaks. So right now these bubbles just came from the air coming out as I expand it for the first time. But if you would see a constant bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble bubble now, you know, you have a leak as well. This tells me everything is good. I don't see any bubbling. It's all good to go. So now we can get it back on the ground and button up the bike and be ready for the road uh on your axle up, everything's spinning, front brake works now, this bike is ready to get back on the road safely. Got good rubber on it, everything mounted up. Well, and again, you know, always check the basics before you get on any bike, take it out on the road. Stay safe. Do the right thing. Check, uh, Dennis kk.com for all your needs. Look it up, find out what you need to get it the next day to you. So I hope you all enjoyed everything. You saw the basic upkeep here before you throw your leg over these bikes. Lots of little things to look at, but don't cut corners, do it safely and you'll ride safe till next time.