Earlier I posted that I have a Metzeler ME88 170/80-15 that I wanted to mount on the rear of my VN750, but it's so wide that is rubs the swingarm. From the replies on this forum I understand that the ME880 will fit without modification which leads me to believe the ME88 is a wider tread design.

The tire was free so 1) it'd be REALLY nice if I could use it, and 2) I've got nothing to lose if I screw it up, right? To that end I mounted it, put the bike on it's center stand, ran it in first gear at a fast idle and tried to shave the side of the tread down with a sharp chisel. Hey, I took wood shop in highschool :o

Attached are pictures of before and after. The chisel worked pretty good and there's definitely something to be said for experimenting with cutting angle and pressure. Sorry that the "after" picture is so poor, but the result was pretty decent - for an amateur.

From what I read on the Web, tire shaving is pretty common for performance cars, also for resolving out-of-round and diameter matching issues on car tires. There are high-dollar machines to do this, and it looks like they use rotary blades to plane the tire surface. The rubber finish after my chisel job was a little ragged.

All said and done, I am going to order a new ME880 170/80-15 because the tire is still too wide. I fixed the rubbing on the swingarm, but I would have to bend the rear hub torque link to accommodate the sidewall of the tire on the right side. Oh well, it was fun anyway.

Well, I gotta give you cudos for trying! I had some huge offroad tires "trued" years ago at a shop in Austin. The machine is similar to the balancing machine, in that it spins the tire and it turns similar to a lathe, with a cutting tool that moves slowly across the tire as it turns and removes just a tiny sliver of rubber only from the high spots and makes the tire round again. They can adjust how deep the blade goes and keep adjusting it until it is making contact with the entire surface on one sweep across the tread and it's done. It made my tires that felt like they were totally out of balance come out silky smooth. I'd had a couple shops try to balance them and even though they were balanced, it still rode rough. The second shop brought me out and showed me that you could see a high spot on each tire while it was spinning on the balancer. Thus, the recommendation to have them "trued".

nice one, you could always space the brake arm out from the mount about 1/8" so you wouldn't have to bend it.

nice one, you could always space the brake arm out from the mount about 1/8" so you wouldn't have to bend it.

And it does look like you could also move the arm to the opposite side of the mounting tab. (the one just to the right of the chisel in the third pic)
And adding a couple washers between the arm and the tab would give you even more room then.