Friday, July 8 2016 [27,589 miles]

The GS front tire was pretty close to the wear bars. It is about 250 miles shy of 10,000 miles old. Front end handling hasn’t been normal for a while. Time for a new tire. Just so happens I’ve had a Shinko 705 of the appropriate size on hand. I bought it in January. I expected I’d need to change the front earlier but I’ve not been putting the same miles on the GS that I used to for various reasons.

I remembered where I put my home made caliper hangers this time. The calipers were removed and hung with care before removing the front wheel. I alse pulled the front ABS sensor to mak sure I didn’t damage in when removing/installing the front wheel. I wiped the dirt and grime off the sensor, too.

I use Murphy’s Oil Soap as a tire lube. It helps in old tire removal as well as installing the new tire. I matched the wheel and tire direction arrows. The Shinko had a red mark – many tires don’t these days. I aligned the mark with the valve stem. Installation wasn’t too bad.

It took a bit of weight to balance the tire/wheel. If I remember I’ll balance the wheel by itself some time in the future. After I did that on my ‘05 I rarely needed to add weights for out-of-balance tires. Maybe this bike will be the same way.

The wheel with new tire is mounted and the bike is ready for a test ride. I’ll do that tomorrow.