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Picture this scene. You are surfing the net, looking for some extra chrome to stick on your pride and joy (that’s your motorcycle not your 4 year old daughter by the way), when you come across a site selling discount motorcycle tires. Not just discount tires; positively slashed bare to the bone discount motorcycle tires! You think back three weeks earlier, when you had your new tires fitted at your local shop. The little fat bald guy who sells tires told you they were cheap right? You do some quick sums in your head and realise you paid twice as much as the ones advertised on the web. Your blood starts to boil, you start to mutter under your breath, all those unutterables that you definitely don’t want your four year old to hear.

And you swear, there and then, never to buy your tires from the shop in town again. Oh, no, from now on your will order discount motorcycle tires online….

……That’s great, really great. But let me ask you this;

Do you actually know how to fit a motorcycle tire? Because I hate to be the one to shatter your dreams of discount motorcycle tire heaven, but if you don’t know how to change a tire, you could be in an extremely embarrassing situation of asking your local shop to fit discount motorcycle tires that you had the nerve to go and buy behind his back! And how much do you think he will charge you for that dubious privilege? (That much? Now double it friend!)

So a little bit of personal development is in order. Now don’t be put off, you can still take advantage of those cheap tires, you just need to learn how to fit them yourself. And it is not as difficult as it sounds or as high tech as it looks in the tire shop downtown. The difficult bit is actually getting the tire off the rim, and the fiddliest part of that is breaking the bead, which is the seal that the motorcycle tire makes with the rim. Under pressure after a few thousand miles, that tire is going to be well bedded in. But, you can buy a bead breaking set for less than 200 dollars. If you search around you will quickly find some guidelines for building your own tire removal and fitting station. Heck if you are really keen you will find a way of breaking the bead on your motorcycle tire using nothing but a 2” by 4” piece of timber and a pick up truck (I kid you not !) I must confess that last method looked a little risky even for me to attempt.

A word of warning here. Brake discs are expensive. If you do go down this route, dont damage them. Guess what? That is mentioned in every article you find on the net about changing motorcycle tires, and with good reason.

After breaking the bead, a bit of brute force and manhandling (on the tire, not the wife) and you should be able to fit your discount motorcycle tires with pride.

Oh a couple of points, make sure the bead is seated properly around the rim when you put some air in those suckers. All the literature you will find on changing tires will mention this, but if you don’t get the tire seated properly, it could cause some major “issues” later on. And the tire will probably need balancing. Some makes claim they don’t, but most do. That’s all on the web as well.

That’s about it really. The rest is up to you. Do your homework and you too could be taking advantage of all those discount motorcycle tires; one set for winter, one set for summer, one set for track days…

Just remember the general idea is to SAVE money buying discounted motorcycle tires, not spend more, OK?