Ok, I have three questions on tires.

1. Balance and Dyna Beads. Who has tried them and how well do they work? Will they be ok in a tube?

2. Speedo drive ratio. would a 94 sporty be a 2:1? is there a different ratio for a 21" from a 19"? and why is there a 2230:60 or what ever that one is.

3. how do they do the white on white wall tires? do they just paint it with a special ink? and what's a good way to cover up marks in it? I bought a set of DA tires. Front one has small scratches in it. not too worried about it. the back one has a couple of good smudge spots I would like to cover up. I'm not putting my bike in any shows so I got the DA ones. after all, who's going to be able to see a smudge or scratch on em at 70.

 

I first started using Dyna Beads in my Ram. I had 39.5" tires on 18x10 rims. Couldn't get a good balance at all because hitting huge rocks changed the heavy spots in the tire changing the balance making the weights pointless. I have them in all of my bikes now. It's best to use nitrogen in the tires because if your bike sits for a while they can clump (because of condensation from compressed air) for a while and the tire will vibrate just a little bit until riding heats everything up inside. But, it's not necessary.

I was told several different ratios with the only bike I have a speedo & cable (the rest are sans speedo). I eventually measured myself the same way I measure rear end ratios. Unhook the speedo cable and spin the tire one full revolution and count how many times the cable end makes a complete revolution. A 21" and 19" tire have very close outside diameter. You may see a slight difference but usually not enough to see a difference in the speedo.

I don't know how the white wall is applied but you can use white wall paint to freshen them up. Doesn't work too well if you're trying to create a whitewall on a blackwall tire...but works very well on tires that are originally white walled.

 

I use Dyna beads religiously now. They make a huge difference. Yes you can put them in a tube.

 

Only knew about the beads

 

I've herd good and bad on the beads,,mostly good,,never tried em.
HD had a "Pen",,white felt tip marker for Tire Lettering,,bout 5 bucks I think

 

Thank you all for your help. mreed, informative as always. I think I may be going with Dyna Beads when I can.

 

from what i understand about whitewalls is that the tire is actually molded with a white rubber then covered with black , then they take a lathe like machine and scrape away the black rubber over white where they want the whitewall. But this might just be the ancient way of doing it?

 

This. The whitewall is molded in. You can clean up dirty whitewalls with the paint they sell for this purpose.

 

How they are made.

You can look up on youtube the poorboy way of doing white walls with a sander.

 

No offense to those who use balance beads but the only real benefit is applications where the balance is apt to change, (wheels spinning on rims, flat spots etc)

Ratio - I cannot help you with that one.

Whitewalls - A strip of rubber with a high content of zinc oxide is placed inside the sidewall then covered with a thin strip of black rubber. The black rubber is then ground away. Generally speaking the WW tire sidewalls are not as robust as BW sidewalls.