I wished I had a tire machine....

[Larry Hampton]

[Hot_Wheels]

wow! I have tried and given up after 5 minutes. I bet that took you like hours!

[bravekozak]

Your wish is my commando.

[sketchman]

You can learn it. I was able to do one tire in 12 minutes after my first one, totally by hand. Helps to have some nice long tire bars that you can get on eBay. They were lo-pro 14s too, which made it harder.

Remembering which end to start from helps a lot.

[Larry Hampton]

Your wish is my commando.

SWEET!!! When are you shipping it?

[Larry Hampton]

wow! I have tried and given up after 5 minutes. I bet that took you like hours!

Nah, the key is that wooden handled hammer. Although that one's handle has been cut down, that's what we used to use for big rig tires back about '83-'84 when my father had a small fleet.

The first one took 20-25 minutes, the 2nd and 3rd only about 10 minutes each. Then I took about an hour break and the 4th took about 15 minutes.

[htchbck]

Been there, done that... finally found a used balancer on CL and a used Corghi A2001 tilt arm tire machine locally on Facebook. Never looked back. I charge $10/tire to mount and balance, and they more than paid for themselves in the first 6 months of use, not to mention all the tires I was able to do for myself. The first day I had the tire machine I dismounted 9 tires from ragged out busted up aluminum rims and took the rims to scrap, made $90 that day!

[Safety Guy]

I got more than my money's worth from the HF tire changer. Twelves and most thirteens are usually easy enough, with some fourteens doable.

Mounting new tires is not easy, but taking off old tires is good.

Karl

[htchbck]

Karl I've done dozens of tires, up to 16" truck and trailer tires, on my old manual one from Tractor Supply (same basic unit as the HF one). Its not ideal for aluminum rims though. I had it bolted to a heavy duty pallet so I could move it around and out of the way when not in use. But once you have the equipment to put on a whole set of 4 new tires in about 1/2 an hour including removal from the vehicle, balancing and reinstalling on the vehicle, you don't ever want to go back lol.

[htchbck]

This was back in the day when I first got set up in the shop, at that time there were only a couple dozen stickers on my balancer. Now the whole front is packed a couple inches deep with them. Each time I install a new tire I put the sticker on the balancer, don't know why, just something I do. I bet I have 2 or 3 hundred now, and thats just new tires, no telling how many used tires have moved through there. I don't sell a lot of used, but I do mount a lot of used ones for folks who get them by bartering through craigslist/facebook.

[Pu241]

I got more than my money's worth from the HF tire changer. Twelves and most thirteens are usually easy enough, with some fourteens doable.

Mounting new tires is not easy, but taking off old tires is good.

Karl

Karl,

Don't forget when I used it to removed about 8-10 old 12" tires I had sitting around.
Should probably get one of my own.
Even if to demount old tires.

How did the bubble balancer experiemnt work out?

[jglutz]

I used to do that...it's crazy...it would be a little easier if you had an anchor bold in the floor to hold the rim still and then swung the pry Barry around the bolt....u loose along of energy whenever the rim spins...all your efforts are wasted if it spins

[Pu241]

http://charlotte.craigslist.org/mpo/4545399950.html