Holy fuck, that was rough. The guides and the videos show the uppers and lowers pulling apart easily. I had to clamp the lowers in the vice and use the uppers as a slide hammer and repeat the bang bang bang process for 5-10 minutes, with the seal moving almost imperceptibly as it walked it’s way out.
Putting the upper bushing back in took a trick, it is a split ring, and is expanded too big to fit in the recess unless you compress it. I found that I could take some brake bleeding hose and cut off about 4" of it, and hammer it in with a punch between the bushing and the lowers. This worked to compress the bushing, and I could then place the washer over it and hammer it down about halfway, and then pulled the washer and hose out and then drive it home.
Tomorrow I get to get back at it and tackle changing the rear tire.
I really do want to balance them, just didn’t have an easy way today. If there was a shop available to mount and balance, I’d absolutely have taken it there. The weights are opposite the valve stem, so I’m hoping that I get lucky, we’ll see.
Yeah, putting on the Road 5s, Revzilla had them for a good bit less than the Road 6.
Do you live near a harbor freight? They have a static balancer for 50ish bucks. I have one and it seems good enough for a few tires a year.