After the Oregon Desert Tour it was definitly time for a new rear tire. My 2001 Ducati ST2 came to me with an inexpensive tire with OK performance and I wanted something like I had on my 1998 ST2. I also wanted to tackle doing the work myself. After spending hours pouring over the internet I ordered a Diablo Strada Rear Tire
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The only things that had me worried as a first time tire changer was breaking the bead, seating the bead and balancing the tire. My original KLX 250S tires were not balanced and I didn't want that feeling on the ST2. I ran across Dyna Beads as an alternative to stick-on weights and I was sold. Other various sites and youtube videos convinced me that I could break the bead without expensive equipment and that my compressor was more than capable of seating the tire.
Here is the bike with the tire removed. No big surprises here except the shop manual doesn't say what size the axle nut is (30mm) and I had to go buy one.
I thought about building a home-made bead breaker, but I found that my largest C-clamp would fit around the tire and it worked great for breaking the bead.
Here you can see the end results next to the old tire - definitely time for a change.
Total time to change the tire was about 3 hours. Mostly because I was being careful and it was about 98F. I expect next time it should take me about an hour. The Dyna Beads seem to work great.
