marking heavy

[kosskas]

Michelin normally has a red dot on it (marking heavy if I remember right). Just got a set in with no dot. They do have a barcode sticker on them near the seal but that is it. Anyone know if they just don't do them on the roads, I haven't run their road line in years.

 

[strataj]

They don't have a dot, I can't remember a dot on a Michelin tire for a long time.  They seem to be in balance.  I change my own tires.  I just changed a set from Pilot Road 4GT (got a great deal) to Road 6GT, they didn't require any weight change per my static balancer. 

[Etienne Lau]

My last pair pr4gt did not need balancing.

[Bernie]

After mounting lots of Michelin Road 3, 4GT, 5GT, 5 and 6GT, I have only seen one tire with a red dot.

It was mounted at BMW on a new bike.

SO don't worry, mount the tire and balance it.

Happy travels!

[Michaelr11]

With all of my Michelin Pilot Road tires, they didn't have markings, so I just mounted them with the tire in the same position as the previous one.

[JCtx]

I'm about to change my stock tires (Z8s) with Road6s too, and noticed no dots. By the way, a red dot means heavy spot, and yellow dot light spot, which is what typically motorcycle tires have, meaning you typically align the yellow dot  with the valve stem (unless you can balance the wheel by itself first, knowing where exactly its heavy spot is). Some folks thought the barcode sticker was the light spot, but that's apparently not the case. I already removed the 30 grams of weights from my front wheel (rear required 35), so we'll see how it changes with the Road6s. When I change them again, will leave the weights in place, since Michelin RoadXs seem to be pretty balanced. With that much weight, my wheels are obviously not balanced, so they'll still need close to that amount IMO, but we'll see. Waiting for better weather to go change them.

[9Mary7]

1 hour ago, JCtx said:

a red dot means heavy spot,

Not on a Pirelli......

[JCtx]

So seems like motorcycle tires with ANY COLOR dot are the light spot then. On car tires, red is heavy, and yellow is light, so I (wrongly) assumed that was the case for bikes too. Sorry for the bad info.

[duckbubbles]

The Michelins that came on my '23 R1250RS were marked with a red dot and lined up close to the valve stem.  I have not seen any markings on the Michelins bought from the aftermarket.

 

A few friends and I mount and balance our own tires with a No-Mar set up. ( My OCD kicks in at this point)  I take the time to mount the tire and check balance.  If it appears too out of balance I break the bead and rotate it 90 deg. on the wheel and try again.  I will do that again if I am still not satisfied with the balance.  Get lucky and no weights are needed or maybe 1/2 oz.  Any dealer or bike shop will just mount it and add a half pound of weight if that's what it takes.

 

Frank

[JCtx]

Interesting about factory Road5 tires having markings, meaning they're probably not that balanced after all. They just want to save a few pennies not doing it. Oh well. I wish I had somebody close to borrow (and pay for it) their tire changing equipment, to do it myself. Then balance the wheels first, to know where exactly the heavy spots are... but I couldn't find anybody. And just changing tires like once every 4 years, it makes no sense to add more crap to the garage. Will check a regional thread I started for the last time, and see if anybody replied by any chance. But if not, will take them to a non-BMW dealer near me tomorrow, and hope for the best.

[duckbubbles]

14 hours ago, JCtx said:

Interesting about factory Road5 tires having markings, meaning they're probably not that balanced after all. 

I am thinking that maybe BMW made a deal with Michelin to mark their original equipment tires so that at the factory they can mount them and use the minimum amount of balance weights. Both ends of mine had approx. 1/2 oz. weights installed.  Everybody after that has to guess.

 

Yesterday I mounted a new set of Michelin Pilot Power 2CT's on my '23.  I rotated the rear through 360 deg. and found that the original mounting was the best with 1 1/2 oz.  The front worked out to 3/4 oz. at the start so I left it.  About the third try with the rear it was really getting tedious, but I had help.

 

Frank

[JCtx]

1/2 oz is great, which is 14g. My front had 30g from the factory, and the rear needed 35g (didn't come balanced). I thought it was a lot, but apparently the max is 3.5 oz or 98g, so maybe not that much. But the fact your new tires required 50% and 150% more weight than your other (marked) Michelin tires, shows they absolutely need to be marked. Oh well. I'm going to balance my wheels, so we'll see how much I end up using.