Review: Tire Sealant from Ride-On installation and observations

I decided to try a product that a lot of motorcycle riders have raved about for years, Ride-On tire sealant.  It seems that there is a cult following online for this product just like SeaFoam has a cult following in the motorcycle world.  So I decided that before a long multi-day trip, I would add it to the tires, the website makes a lot of claims about how it will self seal punctures as well as a claim that it balances the tires constantly and you can even remove the tire balance weights you have on your rim if you want to.   I am skeptical of that claim, so I will leave my weights on the bike for now.  First of all figuring out how much you need is not an easy task, I had to search several places and get the information on my tires before I found out how much I needed, and strangely, you cant buy a bottle of this big enough to do your tires, it requires multiple bottles.  For example on my K1200LT the minimum is 11 ounces for the rear tire and 9 ounces for the front.  The bottles of the product specifically designed for motorcycles only comes in 8 ounce bottles so that means I will have left over that I waste.   Until you read further that adding more, up to 25% more of the recommended dosage is needed for dynamic balancing.  So I figured out that I will put 1 and 3/4 bottles in the rear tire and 1 and 1/4 bottles in the front tire, that makes me feel better about not wasting some of this product.

Adding to the bike takes some planning, if you are a normal person you do not have a nice high pressure air compressor in your garage you typically have the small 12V compressor for doing car tires and your motorcycle tires.  Well adding Ride-On requires you to have a way to do a high volume rapid air inflation to clear the valve stem of the product before you re-insert the valve.  I discovered that what will work for this is a CO2 based emergency tire inflator sold for motorcycles and bicycles.  These will do the job of clearing the valve stem, and honestly are a great idea to have on your bike.  I found one at a local big box store in the bicycle department,  replacement cartridges from the paintball department.  I found you need 3 of them to inflate both tires, so that is what I carry on the bike now as an emergency tire inflation system.  But back to adding this thick pink goo to the tires.....    Big bikes with giant tires and tiny disc brakes will have an easy time of installing the goo,  My K1200LT provided some challenges to this.   The rear tire was easy, the single sided cantilever arm leaves one side wide open for access to the valve, so I removed the valve core and promptly shot it across the garage at high speed.  With your tire at pressure these things will just disappear on you, have your hand cupped over it to keep it from flying away.  Let all the air out and follow the instructions, what the instructions do not tell you is this stuff is sticky and messy goo,  it is also impossible to get the last ounce and a half out of the bottle.  I actually cut the bottles open to get what was left out and used a Popsicle stick to push it into the third bottle to get as much as I could into the last tire.   

On a bike with huge discs and a smaller tire diameter it is a challenge to get in there to get the core out of the tire and get the goo in,  I found that instead of having the valve pointing down, rotate the tires so you have some angle let's you get a better shot at getting all the goo out of the bottle.  Just follow the directions and be patient at the end when you cant get the last bit in the tires.   Clean off the valve stems very well, reassemble, re-inflate to your recommended pressure and right away go for a long ride.  The bottle says 3-4 miles, and that is wrong.  You need to take a 10-15 mile ride and do it at 45-55 mph sustained.  city riding will not do, and superslab 70 is not fun until you get this stuff spread around in the tires.  I hot the road and took a ride north on some rural highway.  I really did not feel much to begin with,  my rear tire is already cupped so I was used to having a vibration. but when I hit the 8 mile mark and stopped to turn around to head home things changed.  It really smoothed out and I could hear the cupped tire when I leaned into a turn but I did not feel the vibration from it anymore.  This stuff actually does smooth out the ride, I was completely surprised by that as I was expecting it to be all marketing BS but there it was.  

So it does seem to balance the tires out better than weights, was not too bad to install but is very messy and does not want to come off when you wipe it off the rim,  I had to use a cleaning product to get it all off.  and unless you have a huge compressor, you need to buy a tool to clear the valves when you install it.  They do claim that it's safe for TPMS but I do not have that on my bike so I cant really speak to it's effectiveness.  I do wonder if the goo will puddle to the bottom of the tires when I let the bike sit and cause vibration until it spreads out again,  only time will tell that.  I do like the idea of a sealant in the tire if I run over a nail or screw on a back road, but I will continue to carry my tire plugger anyways.

I found the best deal on the stuff from amazon.com  My local BMW dealer wanted over $20.00 a bottle for the stuff, I bought them for under $11 a bottle in a 3 pack.  It's expensive for tire sealant but it is the only one designed specifically for motorcycles as far as the marketing tell you, and it has the biggest following online.  Photos of tires with Ride on inside are clean,  Photos of tires with "slime" are a complete mess and I have heard that tire places really hate "slime" because it get's all over their machines.  Is it really effective?  people say it seals punctures well, some say they discover nails in their tires that they never knew were there after having ride on in their tires for a few thousand miles and getting new ones.  Only time will tell if the claims are true.

Basically, I like the peace of mind and I did experience a smoothing out of the ride from the tire balancing effect.  So I feel that the $33.00 I spent was worth it.