Modern Vespa

A local independent scooter shop started off quoting me four hours labor and told me he would need to keep my bike for several days, so he lost my future business. I ride my scooter everyday and can't go that long without it even if the cost was okay and it wasn't.

I called my local dealer and they told me that the rear tire (city grip) was $89 and $75 labor to remove and mount, but I would have to order and pay for the tire in advance and it would take three days for the tire to come in. This seams like a fair price, although there's probably some extras I don't know about like tax and recycling fee.

caecilius was kind enough to post a link to a video showing how to change a rear BV350 tire, so I decided to go for it. Also, I wanted to learn how to do this myself.

Link to the video is in this thread:
BV350 Rear Tire Change - Reasonable Shop Rate?
Thanks, caecilius

Breaknwind suggested Cycle Gear. Since the Cycle Gear website says they will mount a tire for $25, I decided to try them for the tire mount. (Not all store do this, check first.) A City Grip (rear) was $95 with them plus Calif sales tax of about 10%. There was no shipping cost. They also need you to preorder and pay for your tire first. They have the most commonly used motorcycle tires in their store, but none of the sizes for a BV350. If you don't buy your tire from them they charge $50 instead of $25, which would not be worth it. I had my tire sent to their store so that it was ready for me. I ordered it Monday night and it was there on Wednesday mid-day. Watch your email since they send you a notice when it's in. They can mount it while you wait, but you need to allow up to an hour for them to mount it since they also have to keep their merchandise buyers happy at the same time. I.e. someone buying expensive gear would come before your $25 mounting job. You can drop off and pick up later, too.

I dropped my wheel off Friday night and picked it up on Saturday morning. $25 was actually $35, which included a $5 recycling fee, about $3.75 for a new valve stem, and sales tax on the valve stem. I was told by the employee that it included balancing, but when I got home I noticed that the old weights had not been removed since they still had the dirt on them from when I brought in my wheel. Also, the cap on the valve stem was not replaced with a cap. When you get your wheel back and before you leave the store, besides checking for scratches on the rim, look for the valve cap, and balance weights. They were careful not to scratch my rim. I suppose I could take my old tire with me and save $5 and tell them to not replace the valve stem every time and could actually get the mount for $25. I don't know why my wheel wasn't balanced. (Possible that they did and the weights in the same place were just right, but I doubt it.) I'll have to ask the next time which means this might cost more. Next time I will remove the weights and valve dust cap before I go to their store.

I started removing my wheel Friday night at about 5:30 pm in my back yard and wasn't able to get to the store in time since I was still figuring out what I was doing. The first time you do this it takes a long time. Try to do this in good light. Put your parts on sheets of paper and label them for reinstallation. I taped my parts down too. Removal took me about an hour and a half, but I think I can do it in 20 minutes now. Reinstall went a lot faster.

You will need
T25, T30, and T40 star bits and screwdriver bit holder
a long breaker bar or socket wrench
17mm socket for the bottom of the shock and the exhaust joint
15/16 inch socket (this fits better than the metric size for the main wheel bolt)
a pair of ring pliers for the circlip (Its very hard to get the circlip off without this.)
a number 4 Allen wrench bit and number 6 Allen wrench bit
a small tube of anti seize
small container of grease
replacement cotter pin
replacement exhaust gasket (if you are careful you can reuse the same one)
latex gloves
roll of paper towel to wipe off the dirt on your parts and hands

1. Put bike on center stand
2. Remove plastic exhaust cover (two screws).
3. Remove exhaust pipe. You can undo the exhaust at the joint or from the head. I removed from the joint. Be careful not to burn your hands, if it's still hot. If you are careful, you can reuse the exhaust gasket, and I did. But personally I recommend changing it when you change your tire. You should have a spare on hand either way.
4. Pull the cotter pin out. This is harder than you would think. I used a hammer to help get it out.
5. Remove the bolt cover for the bolt on the spindle
6. Get your teenage daughter to hold the rear brake while you partially undo the nut on the spindle. Thanks, Lani. Alternately, use a zip tie on the rear brake to hold the wheel still while you partially undo the nut on the spindle.
7. Undo the two bolts holding the brake caliper in place and pull it off of the disk and set it out of the way.
8. Remove the screw holding the brake line in place on the swing arm.
9. Unscrew the ABS/traction control sensor and move it out of the way.
10. Undo the bolts on swing arm and pull it off. Two of the bolts on the swing arm were really tight. They were so tight that you probably couldn't undo them on the side of the road unless you had the proper tools. I suggest you undo them once and torch them to spec even if you do not remove your own wheels. Two of these bolts are different sizes, so keep track of where they came from. I had to use a giant pair of vise grips on my multi-screwdriver/bit holder tool to get one of them off. One of the other ones was right in front of the exhaust joint. It was very hard to get something to both fit and get some leverage on. I bought a small wrench at Oreillys that accepts an Allen bit of the right size and tapped it three times with a hammer to get that bolt going. Now that I think about it, I think that you could put the Allen bit in a large crescent wrench to get this bolt off.

11. Remove the circlip with a pair of ring pliers. Alternately, use the smallest pair of pliers you have and squeeze the circlip together and pull it out. I did it with a small pair of pliers and fumbled around for about 15 minutes before I got. Mine bounced out, so watch where it goes. It's not easy to do this without the ring pliers. While I was out, I bought a pair of ring pliers at Ace Hardware for $2.99 plus tax. Go there or Harbor Freight.

12. Remove the nut, spacer, and cone from the spindle. Watch the order that they come off so you can reinstall the same way.
13. If you can, remove the mud guard. It's difficult to get to the screws to remove, so I left mine on. Loosen what screws that you can.

14. Wrap the bottom of the shock and the spindle with small rags so that they do not scratch your rim when you pull your tire off.
15. Carefully pull the tire off the spindle and tilt it to the side so that you can pull it out from between the bottom of the shock and the spindle. You may need to give your tire a couple of gentle kicks from the other side to get it started coming off, if it's stuck.

16. The end of the spindle (center part), spacer, and cone had some white grease on them. So I put some grease back on them. Don't get any grease on the screws of the spindle.
17. I suggest putting a dab of anti-seize on your bolts during reassembly. The threads on the end of my spindle were a little rusty so I put some on it.
18. Use a torch wrench to torch the spindle nut to spec. If you don't have a torch wrench then tighten the nut as tight as it was when you undid it. (Harbor Freight has inexpensive torch wrenches. They even have a super small one that fits on the end of your socket wrench and works well.)
19. You won't be able to reinstall the brake caliper until you tighten the nut on the spindle since the bolts won't reach unless you do this first. And you will need to carefully expand the area between the brake pads with something like a large blade screwdriver before putting the caliper back on. Wrap something around your large screwdriver blade so that you don't damage your brake pads. Squeeze your brakes a few times before you do a test ride afterwards.
20. The swing arm has an area like the area for the ABS sensor that is not used. Don't worry that it is empty.

I had to cover my scooter with an easy-up for a day while it was raining before I could put my wheel back on. I lowered it all the way down and it worked fine. I taped plastic bags over the exhaust pipe and spindle area while I waited for the rain to stop. It kept most of the rain off my bike.

Good Luck, if you try this yourself.

Okay, I probably a few things wrong. If you know better tell the rest of us how to do this better.

Direction of the tire looks wrong to me. Check the "Rear" arrow at the side of the tire...

why do you need snap ring tools? is the bearing bad?
i flatend my tire the first day i took the scooter out of the store
and hade to wait a week becaouse it was easter and they dident have tire in stock.
soon gonna do 10.000km (600miles) service on mine my self

Good job btw

Sorry to have to tell you this. Your tire is on backwards. If you want to double check this, look at the arrow on the brake rotor, it should be pointing in the same direction.
If you check your other thread, you'll notice I mentioned that they put Waterboysh's tire on backwards and had to reinstall it correctly.
Sorry for the bad news but now you will gain even more experience with tire removal. Good thing you posted pictures and we saw it.
BTW, you don't need to remove the snap ring from the swing arm.
When/if you have the tire reinstalled, remove all the weights and clean the off the glue.

Great write-up! It'l be useful for me as I plan on changing out my tires later this year.

I noticed you used a teenage daughter but forgot to put her in the supplies list. Fortunately I have one on standby, so she shouldn't be too hard to press into use.

If that tire rotation is bad, that kinda sucks...though it should be a breeze the second time around.....

I went outside and looked at the small direction arrow on the tire and it is going in the right direction. But add this to the things to check before you leave the store because the tire is definitely directional.

Good to know about the snap ring. Next time I'll try not removing it.

I'd suggest you look for the word "Front" somewhere on the tire then.

So as not to confuse the direction arrow, use this rule.
"The arrows follow the direction of forward rotation."

I either draw a small arrow on both sides of the rim on the lip showing rotation or I put a piece of masking tape on the wheel showing rotation. I also note if its a front or rear wheel, as most motorcycle shops dont know anything about scooters. Now I have been told this several times concerning Michelin scooter tires, they come pre-balanced.?! The same old weights were still on my CityCom wheel and I checked the balance before installing it, and it was fine. Same when I did another wheel on a Kymco People 250. Strange but so-far true.

I still think your tire is on backwards. If it was the front, it would be normal. There should be an arrow with the word "Rear". Post a photo of the arrow you checked...

And two example photos taken from Google...

you are correct, if you look at the first pic of the rim and tire you can clearly see the arrow pointing down

yours is mounted backwards

Agreed.

I drew it for you in the pic. Yellow indicates wheel rotation. I circled the indicator and if you look just above it at the edge of the tread there's a small arrow. Find that and turn the wheel. The arrow needs to be pointing in the same direction that the wheel turns. I noticed in your pic that the rotor doesn't have an arrow on it like my BV's.
I realize it sucks doing things twice but I'd bet my whole retirement fund on it. I've replaced 5 BV tires, 6 counting Waterboysh's tire.

What if you see the word "Front" next to the arrow?

At the top or the bottom

That would be the direction of rotation for a front tire. This picture shows the arrow on a rear tire. (BTW, this is a City Grip that's going on my BV350 this spring.) Tires which can be used on either the front or rear have two arrows, or none.

Look at the tread just below the REAR. That's an arrow to ensure clarity.

Okay, I looked at the markings while I rolled my tire forward and the tire was mounted backwards on the rim. I'll have my tire balanced while I'm back at Cycle Gear.

Well I gave you a thumbs up for at least trying to change your own tyre. I still think you should just do it again and then produce a wiki article on how to do it. No-one ever gets things right first time.

I came into this thread to warn you to check the tire before leaving Cycle Gear because they mounted mine backwards, but it appears as if I am to late.

Round Two

I got around to remounting my tire today. I started out labeling the tire first.

I label mine contrary to the arrow on the tire since I know that its backwards.

If you are starting out with your tire mounted correctly then the labeling arrow should match.

i've done this once or twice myself, but at least caught it before either airing up the tire or mounting it to the bike.

sucks to do it all over again, but it probably went a lot faster this time!

kudos on getting in there and getting dirty!

and, for everybody else reading along: if you take in your stuff loose to have new donuts put on ALWAYS label the rims-- front with an arrow, rear with an arrow. many places don't have the product knowledge or they're just straight hustling and working from muscle memory. that two seconds to drop some blue tape on there and marker it up can save a ton of hassle.

-g

I got to Cycle Gear at 11:00 am and I was the only customer in the store. I told him my tire got mounted backwards and he got right to remounting it for me. He balanced the wheel for me also and said that they do this for free. It took him about 22 minutes, but 10 of that was waiting for the air tank to fill up to get pressure.

You don't need to and shouldn't remove the circlip from the swing arm. Leave it alone. The only reason I can see when you would need to remove it would be to replace a bad bearing in the swing arm. I was copying the German guy in the video.

I also noticed that I could use the weight of my scooter to hold the wheel in place while I undid the main nut by not putting my scooter on the center stand until after I got the main nut started.

It took me about 15 minutes each to remove and reinstall the wheel.

Bump