With 20,000 miles on BlackMagic I'll bet I
have screwed around with the rear
wheel alignment 40 times in 2 years. I
just could not get it right since having
new tires installed and losing the factory
alignment pre-sets.
I tried every suggested method of aligning
the belts and tires and nothing
worked right. Either the belt squeaked
or the bike pulled to one direction or
the other when I took my hands off the
handlebars.
That was until I discovered the $6.00
cure. I figured that the way the factory
aligns the bikes is to clamp the two wheels
in a jig until the back tire is
aligned with the front, then they tighten
up the back tires alignment bolts. A
foolproof assembly line procedure.
(This procedure depends on the type of bike stand or
jack you use also)
So I invented a way to (almost) duplicate
that procedure for short money. I
bought two 3/4" by 10' pieces of straight
electrical conduit at the hardware
store. With the rear of the bike jacked
up and the bike in gear I zip-tied the
conduit to the rear tires.
(You possibly could use bungee cords substitute for
zip ties)
With this arrangement a very small
adjustment on the rear adjustment bolts
shows up as a very large movement of the
conduit as it straddles the front
tire.
Fiddle with your adjustment bolts until
the conduit is the same distance on either side of the
front tires and your wheels are now in
perfect alignment!