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Quick PSA for everyone: clean your rotors off after installing new tires!


mark77
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Hey everyone,


Mainly what the title says. I had a bit of a butthole clenching moment today on the way home from my shop just now after putting two new tires on my bike.


I always use a spray bottle with diluted Dawn dish detergent to lubricate the beads while installing the tires. This time was no different, but I had one of the beads on my front tire refuse to seat twice so I had to break the beads and reseat them - which led to me spraying a fair amount of the Dawn solution on the bead.


Some of you can probably see where this is going at this point: while spraying the beads, some splatter / overspray / whatever got onto my brake rotors. I buttoned everything back up, cleaned my chain, and went on my merry way.


.... Until I had to stop suddenly after a minivan pulled out in front of me, and realized I had very little braking power on either brake. I had to squeeze as hard as I could to stop from 35 mph, which I managed to do, but was rather scary while it was happening. Immediately after I got moving again, I realized what was up and tried to engage my rear ABS (which isn't hard on the XSR) and I couldn't despite mashing the brake pedal.


A quick detour to the closest Advance Auto for some brake cleaner and 5 minutes in the parking lot rectified my issue. Needless to say, it would have been a whole lot easier and safer had I remembered to clean the rotors after seating the beads instead of what I actually did. Hopefully someone can learn from my stupid mistake and save themselves some trouble!


PS: as a guy who is coming from always running supersport tires, sport touring tires comparatively suck ass to mount / demount. If you are planning to do them, a third spoon and rim guard along with a buddy to help out (or a tire machine) is pretty much mandatory.


Thank you!

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"A quick detour to the closest Advance Auto " A quick detour to the closest toilet more like , or was it too late for that ? 😯

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Glad you're ok and worked the problem out quickly! :shock:


Always horrifying when you get into a sticky situation and your bike doesn't respond as you expected it to.

 

PS: as a guy who is coming from always running supersport tires, sport touring tires comparatively suck ass to mount / demount. If you are planning to do them, a third spoon and rim guard along with a buddy to help out (or a tire machine) is pretty much mandatory.

I had a friend once who was INSISTENT that he could change the tyre on his bike himself and didn't need a garage tyre machine.


6 hours and multiple trips to halfords later, with a shredded tyre and bashed up wheel hub, he relented in letting the garage do the change.

It took them max 10 mins. :roll:

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