Having a hitch rack on my goldwing, I was very reluctant to remove the wheel in the traditional way, for the extra time to be spent removing the hitch hardware. I considered raising the rear a bit with help of 2×4 wood pieces but that too sounded not-so-easy.
Susan Coles of our CA2Q goldwing chapter shared a cool video of GL1800 wheel removal. Some guy laid the bike down on the right side, with the front and rear crash bars resting on mats. He then raised the rear wheel by deploying the centre stand while pushing down the bike more on the right. Then it was a 5-minutes-5-nuts job to get the wheel out.
Here is the video: http://home.comcast.net/~pidjones/t2.wmv
It worked out perfectly for me. I used two pieces of 8″x8″ scrap laminate wood on some cardboards. It did not even feel scary to let it down and also to get it up. I made a small mistake though, I should have done this with the tank near empty. While the bike was down, some gas leaked out. It was a bit scary but after the bike was upright again I let the gas dry out and it started just fine.
#1 by Jack Fischer on July 2, 2009 - 7:26 pm
Joy,
I enjoyed the instructional video very much.
Thank you for sharing it. A fond hello to Pretti
too.
Sunny and Jack
#2 by oreen on July 8, 2009 - 10:06 pm
man, must be something trying to work with a huge thing like that! here we call the Enfields heavy
#3 by mike howard on July 14, 2009 - 6:07 pm
Man, I sure wish it was that easy on the Honda Cruisers! But with a through axle that has to be pulled, just can’t do it that way. Sure looks to me like Honda fixed this so a halfway mechanically minded person has a chance to fix it on the side of the road…if you got the right equipment and a spare wheel and tire! ha ha I enjoyed watching this fellow do the tire change tho. Gives me hope I can do something similar when the time arrives.
#4 by pidjones on January 26, 2010 - 12:36 pm
Glad you liked it. If you listen closely in the video, I had a full tank, and leaked gas too!