Hi ya,
Have not posted in a longggg time.. well I ride a Honda street motorcycle, cbr 600 F2 to be exact. now I called my local tire shop that claims to have the best deals on rubber, I needed front and rear tires ! Price as quoted for Dunlop SportMax Street Smarts ( now keep in mind this is with me pulling the wheels off the bike) I would just drop them and they just pull the old off and mount and balance the new tires. was $387.00 bucks !!!! WoW !
So I got online found the tires shipped to my door for $247.00 front and rear same exact tires. Now this part is funny, my shop in Newport Beach cuts me deals.. wanted $50 to mount and balance them ( I take wheels off the bike) so I thought that was an ok deal.. but I called the Honda shop up near my work in Orange, they were only $32.00 so of course Honda in Orange here I come.. they changed them in 20min or less. Now when I went back to pick them up ( great guys and super nice) they told me the front wheel had to have the bearings replaced. Well they wanted $53 just for the bearing, didn't even ask the labor as I'm sure that would have been about $30 min.. so lets say $90 total. Now I have been inventing stuff for years and making all sorts of skateboards and such for yrs I noticed that the bearings were just a standar 6004 sealed bearing.. well looking on the net I found them local for $9 ea.. not bad.. I looked a bit more found a guy closer and he even had the super nice skf bearing ( made in france) for only $12 bucks.. well I only needed one bearing as the SKF dealer says yup only one needed.. so I had to take the seal off the old and pump a bit of grease into it ( people try to tell ya sealed bearing can't be service, and that's total BS) you just pop the seal off and put in grease. No big deal. so here are a few picts of what I had going on, and be known you to can save yourself a ton of money by being a bit of a smart shopper and doing some labor on your own ! had I rolled with normal pricing, I would have been out a total of $477.00 but instead I'm out barely $291.00 I think that's about 39% not bad, I also was able to grease up the front and rear bearings that for SURE wouldn't have been done by the service peeps.. so hope this helps you save some $$$
Rene
ps. keep in mind you just need to use a super small flat head screw driver to remove the seal no major deal, you don't even need to remove the bearing to grease it.. but if you do you won't need a press, just a hammer and something to tap the edges of the inner race to get it out, then use on both races lightly to get it back in !
