Several folks have complained about the vibration that results after installing rim locks. After having done this myself and experienced the vibration, it was either fix it, or pull out the rim locks. The vibration was so bad that riding over 50 MPH was downright scary and much faster than that and my bike began into that "head shake" zone.

So I pulled the wheels off my bike today and took them to the dealer. Yeah, I know what you are thinking - Brian hates the stealership. Well, this dealer isn't so bad and they were pretty free with advice for me when I did my 300cc install. This is not the dealer that I bought my bike from. I tried to get it from them first, but they didn't have any in stock and couldn't guess when they would be getting any in. Anyway, they have a wheel balancer and for $20 bucks, fixed up both wheels to be nice and true. That's a pretty good deal, IMO. BTW, the back was so bad he had trouble getting it to balance out completely and he said it was still about 1/2 ounce off out of about 5 ounces total, so it's not perfect, but a whole lot better than what it was.

And man what a difference it made - perfect running, smooth, no vibration at all. I highly recommend this to anyone that has rim locks. It makes a world of difference.

Spoke weights, on bottom, opposite the rim lock:






BTW, I'm lovin' those Trak Master II's:





Edit: fix photo links

 

Wow, thats a lot of wieght. I have read somewhere, the best cure is to add another rim lock 180 degrees fron the original. Yes, you just drill a new hole in the rim.

 

That does sound like a good solution also and would doubly hold the tire to the rim. If I ever have any problems with the spoke weights, that's what I'll do.

 

Hey what kind of GPS is that? Batery or is it wired.

 

Brian, Where Is your sense of fashion? Your helmet doesn't match your jacket, your jacket doesn't match your pants, and none of it matches your bike..don't you know about color coordination? [sm=icon_beat.gif] LOL My girlfriend is apalled that none of my gear matches the "pretty green" of the bike. Oh well...

 

Garmin GPSMAP 276C - just got it last week. So far I give it a solid thumbs up. My only complaint at this time is that the memory card slot is Garmin proprietary. Some units take a standard flash memory card format which are about 1/10th the price of Garmin's proprietary cards. Unfortunately, this one only take the Garmin proprietary format.

 

My wife has learned that I just do not have the color coordinating gene. I guess I just really don't care whether stuff matches or not In fact, I happen to think that color coordinated dirt bike outfits are sort've, I don't know, girly? I personally don't give trying to match colors a second thought. I guess I'm sort've the Rodney Dangerfield of bikers

 

Sorry - forgot to say, the GPS receiver is battery powered and is rechargable. It comes with a cable that can be wired to your vehicle battery if you want, though.

 

Thanks for the info Brian. I have the TM II's and I do get the head shake at speed. Although, i only have a rim lock on the rear tire. I'll see if I can get my rear wheel balanced a nd report the improvement.

Hey, I like the gear.

 

You might want to go ahead and pull the front off and get it balanced too. Even though you don't have a rim lock in there, it could still be off. Couldn't hurt to get it checked out.