Hi all. I'm relatively new to bikes, but not to doing my own mechanical work. I picked up my '92 GSF-400 back in November, put a couple thousand miles on it since and realized the tires that came on it were dangerously worn, old & dried out.
I shopped around and decided on a set of Pirelli Sport Demons. Got them mounted/balanced at Cycle Gear, picked them up and reinstalled the wheels onto the bike. After a couple walk-arounds to make sure all the hardware was nice and snug I took it out for a ride to see how the new rubbers felt. I didn't get very far down the road before I noticed a weird (to me) noise coming from the front tire. Could also be coming from the rear for all I know, but obviously I'm in a better position to hear noises coming from the front and not the rear. Anyway, it sounds exactly like the kind of tire noise you'd hear from a pickup truck driving on the street with knobby offroad tires.
I immediately turned around and pulled back into the driveway, put it up on the stand and double, even triple re-checked everything. No clearance/rubbing issues with the brake caliper, rotor, wheel, speedo sensor & wire, fender, et cetera. Front wheel spins pretty freely too, so I concluded it was probably safe to ride. Put about 100 miles on it since then just riding around my neighborhood between 25-50 mph and it feels fine as far as I can tell. But being a bike noob, I'm still a bit worried. Is this kind of noise normal on brand new bike tires? Has anyone ever experience this before? Like I said, I'm pretty confident in my own mechanical work, but being that this, an oil change and a battery swap are the extent of my motorcycle wrenching experience, I wanted to get some feedback from more experienced riders.
Topic: Unexpected noise after installing new tires (Read 6977 times)