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I'm fussy about my tyre balance, but that's more because I can be, rather than that I think I need to be.
This has come about since I started to fit my own tyres .. which began when I was skint and fitted a pair of ex-desmodue race scrubs and has continued since I fitted carbon wheels (which I'm not letting a tyre fitter anywhere near).
I use the cable tie method .. and I can report that it works very well indeed on original, 3-spoke monster wheels (later type) and also on my Dymag carbons.
I utilise nothing more brutal than a couple of 3 inch long, plastic, bicycle tyre levers to ease the tyre onto the rim, and even these are not strictly necessary .. I've done it with just my thumbs in the past.
The reason I mention all this is that, even after removing the cable ties, its fairly easy to rotate the tyre on the wheel before seating the beads.
I therefore first balance the bare wheels alone (without tyres but including sprocket and discs) and mark the heavy point ... which does not necessarily correspond to the valve position) before fitting the tyre with the marked light spot aligned with the measured heavy spot on the wheels.
I then static balance the wheel/tyre assembly before seating the beads.
Because the tyre beads are not yet seated on the rim, I can then rotate the tyre on the rim until the most favourable position is found .. ie the nearest to balance without any added lead.
Thus the lead needed is kept to a minimum.
Ok, some might say that the above is being over-fussy .. but its not hard to do, so why wouldn't you ?
Similarly, I don't know exactly how important wheel balance is on a motorcycle, but I would still rather balance than not, simply because you can't deny the physics and I'm keen to set my bike up to the best of my ability.
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