In reply to spedracer :
You have 24-hour tire shops? Tell us more.
In reply to spedracer :
You have 24-hour tire shops? Tell us more.
Used Coats 9024E tire machine - $800
New spin balancer. - $225
Being able to Change tires on a Sunday night. Priceless
David S. Wallens said:In reply to spedracer :
You have 24-hour tire shops? Tell us more.
Not sure there's much to say. I live in the suburbs, but close to our "downtown", which has been built up quite a bit over the past few years. All around that little pocket though, are the older parts of town. A lot of taco shops and used tire shops. Some of them have a fairly grumpy Mexican dude that'll wake up if you ring the doorbell and change your tire.
It really is great. The area looks a little sketchy but really isn't, the people are generally nice, and service is quick. I waited 30 minutes at a discount tire just to drop off rims, and have been turned away (after ordering!) because 225's on 9's is " unsafe". No such problems at the "Llantera" ("tire shop" in Spanish, I think). Last time I was there I dropped 3 sets of rims/tires off on my way to the grocery store, they were sitting out front when I stopped on the way back home. $120 total. That said, I don't get track tires balanced, as there's enough rubber stuck to them after a few laps that it hardly matters. I'm sure they'll also mess up a rim or tire at some point, but I'm so far ahead I'll eat the cost without complaint.
Got a FB notification this morning that said I've had my machines 5 years.
I would have to check the log but I've probably changed 100+ sets of tires. At $20 each thats $8000, or about 4 times the cost of the machines. Granted all of those haven't been for me but the donation bucket has already more than paid for the machines so I'm well into the black.
A couple years back we added a used tire machine and balancer (local tire shop upgraded) to the shop at work, so now I can do free tire jobs without having spent any money on the equipment. We do lots of business with a local tire shop for our industrial tires and they come and take away the scrap tires even. It's a pretty sweet deal that I'd recommend.
After years of begging our local Discount Tire stores to do loose wheels - and the hassles and limitations of making two trips each time - I decided to buy a tire machine and balancer for my shop back in 2011.
I hunted around and traded some parts for a used tire mounting machined bought bought a used tire balancer at an equipment auction - which was a complete dud - so I bought another used one. Both machines needed everything replaced, and we spent more time and money fixing these used machines than we would have buying new. That was my first mistake. They were also old, and the balancer maxed out at 17" dia... so we had to extrapolate balance weights to do 18" and 19" wheels.
Then the "time math" started to hurt - we charged customers $100/set to dismount / mount / balance 4 loose wheels and tires, but racers only bring pain in the butt low profile tires, so you end up spending an hour to do 4. Before too long our shop rate was $115/hour. In our area in Texas there are lots of independent tire shops that will do a set of 4 for $60-75 cash. So I sold the tire machines and went back to hauling tires to a nearby shop that had better machines and, frankly, didn't charge enough to mount tires.
Maybe someday I will listen to JG here and buy some nice NEW machines, with modern features. The convenience of having machines in-house saves a LOT of hassle and time - I can easily burn an hour or two loading / unloading / hauling wheels to a tire shop, then going to get them again. Still not a great payback unless you are doing a LOT of track and autocross work. But lately... now you got me thinking!
Great article - keep em coming.
In reply to Fair :
I haven't had an issue with Discount Tire doing loose wheels, what's up with that?
this thread got me thinking about getting a cheap HF tire mounting tool and bubble balancer for track tires. I have to flip my tires and get them rebalanced and I'm too lazy to load my track wheels into my car and take them to the discount tire down the street. The tires I want to get next (GT Radial SX2) are not available at any of the popular chain shops, and I don't want to buy them, ship to home, then haul them with the wheels to a local shop.
I wish I had bought a setup when I worked for my father-in-law 10 years ago. It would have EASILY paid for itself (company money, too) by now with just personal vehicles, not the commercial vans and such.
In my case I bought an old but solid machine for 400, harbor freight bubble balancer for around 60 and it works great. I mostly use scrubs and local hand me downs so I avoid paying full price to mount tires I might use for a day and the dirty looks from the tire shop for bringing in old junk!
I think i'd settle just for a balancer. I don't mount enough tires to make it make sense for the amount of floor space it takes up. However I do throw wheel weights more often than I'd like. I wish I could convince the tire tech to clean the spot they are adding weights, and not install them on ribs or edges so they actually contact well. Minumum effort is pretty par for the course at most tire shops unfortunately.
I balanced a set of motorcycle wheels once, then mounted many sets of tires manually and they never felt out of balance. Lately I had a new set of LT truck tires put on a 2019 F250 and they shook after being balanced. Took them to another shop and they found them to be all out about 1 to 1.5 oz. Once they balanced them they were smooth.
I could do the motorcycle tires with just 3 tire irons and no power equipment. Can that be done with on 17x9 wheels with 45 or 55 series tires?
So, the older wheels for my racecar are welded together instead of bolt together like my new fronts. The only shop I found that could mount on them without making a pretzel is over an hour away. It's a workout, it takes some time, but a harbor freight changer base and a no-mar tool are my solution for this. Likely not applicable to low profile tires though.
I feel like a lot of us have gotten really spoiled and lazy.
CanAm races. 1970
https://youtu.be/C0HCR9ccYnw?si=upB0t0PLWl_jieMO
Aside from the cigarettes there isn't a single unhealthy looking person in the film.
In reply to A 401 CJ :
I will say, I'm not interested in trying the 275/40/17 my mustang runs manually. Many modern sports tires are an unholy combo of super stiff sidewall and low profile.
My 10" wheels with bias ply Hoosiers, sure thing though.
theruleslawyer said:I think i'd settle just for a balancer. I don't mount enough tires to make it make sense for the amount of floor space it takes up. However I do throw wheel weights more often than I'd like. I wish I could convince the tire tech to clean the spot they are adding weights, and not install them on ribs or edges so they actually contact well. Minumum effort is pretty par for the course at most tire shops unfortunately.
If you're bringing loose wheels, remove the old weights and clean the barrel surface before you bring them in (think of it as a good opportunity to check for cracks and bends). Put gaffer tape over the weights when you pick them up and that should fix the weight-throwing problem.
When my brother and I were racing a pair of ITB Volkswagens a few years ago, I bought a vintage manual machine and bead breaker off of craigslist for $150. Think harbor freight design, but much beefier and made in the USA. Found an old NAPA bubble balancer for $50. No matter how much camber we put into the cars. They always wore the outside edge faster than inside. I could flip a 14” Nitto NT-01 in under 6 minutes from start to finish. So that setup worked great and paid for itself immediately. But 18” Hoosiers would be another matter…
I'm gonna throw a big depends on your needs and what you have. The machines in the article are antiquated technology. Those tables with the claws that grab the wheel are really good for bending and cracking lightweight wheels and they will also leave nice scars on the inside of the wheel. Normal wheels, yea....all day every day. The balancer, road force is the industry standard for everything now so there is that. I feel like most of us know a dude that could do them anytime we needed but just need to ask.
I'm kinda with Fair on this one...
As you might imagine, I do a LOT of tire work...and don't own a machine. Instead, I got a guy...Joe. Lives ten minutes away. Joe has machines and does impeccable work. He even likes to be challenged (try mounting floppy sidewall tires on custom Finspeed wheels with straight, not tapered, barrels). Sadly, he recently raised his prices. Was $50, now $60 per set. OMG, I'm gonna go broke now,... 
He did two sets for me last week and will do two more this week.
Joe is also a machinist and has done some really clever work for me over the years...but that's a story for another day.
I picked up a used Ranger tire mounting machine and balancer last winter for $1,800 from a local shop that was upgrading. They are probably 20 years old but work fine for my use. No assist arm on the mounting machine, but an extra tire iron from Amazon solved that. I did have to buy a 100 gram calibration weight from China and you need a 14-inch steel rim and tire to calibrate the balancer, fortunately a stock NA Miata wheel fits the bill. I also bought some good tire paste, which really helps with mounting and seating beads, and good lube that I use for discounts. My machines are set up for 110-volt and I've been running the mounting machine off of the generator I use for my race trailer, that has a 30 amp 110 volt outlet. Ive also gotten away with just using the HF 125 psi 21 gal compressor that I already had and haven't needed to pur have a higher pressure one. I've dismounted 4 sets of tires, including 2 sets of Hoosier R7s, swapped a set of Hankook RS4s from one set of wheels to another and mounted my new Continental track tires, all without incident. I had never used either of these types of Machines before.
In reply to JMcD :
if it's the inboard side, with a tire mounted , lay flat on floor, whack with 2 hands and a large rubber dead-blow mallet. I watched at my buddy's shop...very impressive.
the outside is stiffer because of the spokes, so usually not doable this way.
In reply to Apexcarver :
agree
even doing stock size 245/40-17 on my M Coupe at my buddy's shop was a challenge for me; good thing he was there to bail me out.
When my brother and I were racing a pair of ITB Volkswagens a few years ago, I bought a vintage manual machine and bead breaker off of craigslist for $150. Think harbor freight design, but much beefier and made in the USA. Found an old NAPA bubble balancer for $50. No matter how much camber we put into the cars. They always wore the outside edge faster than inside. I could flip a 14” Nitto NT-01 in under 6 minutes from start to finish. So that setup worked great and paid for itself immediately. But 18” Hoosiers would be another matter…
Andy Hollis said:I'm kinda with Fair on this one...
As you might imagine, I do a LOT of tire work...and don't own a machine. Instead, I got a guy...Joe. Lives ten minutes away. Joe has machines and does impeccable work. He even likes to be challenged (try mounting floppy sidewall tires on custom Finspeed wheels with straight, not tapered, barrels). Sadly, he recently raised his prices. Was $50, now $60 per set. OMG, I'm gonna go broke now,...
He did two sets for me last week and will do two more this week.
Joe is also a machinist and has done some really clever work for me over the years...but that's a story for another day.
If we hd "a guy" we maybe wouldn't have the machines. We used to have A Guy, but the thing about A Guy is that Guy sticking around seems like the exception and not the rule. So eventually we were mounting tires at Discount for $130+ a set plus the lost time.
So now we have the machines and I'm The Guy, and on rare occasions we'll send a set of particularly tricky tires (coughbridgestonecough) on specialized wheels to the experts and their high-tech machines with a zillion helper arms. After two years they probably haven't paid for themselves in pure tire mounting costs, but if you combine those costs with the time spent away from the desk and running tires and wheels around town then the math seems really favorable. Plus the sheer convenience of flipping, or mounting a set of takeoffs for a practice day that we might not otherwise mount, or being able to throw a few different sizes of tires on a set of wheels and se how they fit on a car in real time. All that adds up to make the gear even more useful than we thought it might be.
Obviously we're kind of a special case, but we probably don't use get more use out of the stuff than someone who's running 2-3 times a month, or chasing a championship and always needing to have the right rubber on the right wheels.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
Yah, I've cleaned them with my pressure washer and scraped off weights. That doesn't help them sticking them on so only 1/4 of the glue is in contact with the wheel. Gaffer tape I don't know, but I know some folks use aluminum hvac tape. They also apparently have no idea what the dots on the tires mean. Just frustrating.
JG Pasterjak said:Andy Hollis said:I'm kinda with Fair on this one...
As you might imagine, I do a LOT of tire work...and don't own a machine. Instead, I got a guy...Joe. Lives ten minutes away. Joe has machines and does impeccable work. He even likes to be challenged (try mounting floppy sidewall tires on custom Finspeed wheels with straight, not tapered, barrels). Sadly, he recently raised his prices. Was $50, now $60 per set. OMG, I'm gonna go broke now,...
He did two sets for me last week and will do two more this week.
Joe is also a machinist and has done some really clever work for me over the years...but that's a story for another day.
If we hd "a guy" we maybe wouldn't have the machines. We used to have A Guy, but the thing about A Guy is that Guy sticking around seems like the exception and not the rule. So eventually we were mounting tires at Discount for $130+ a set plus the lost time.
So now we have the machines and I'm The Guy, and on rare occasions we'll send a set of particularly tricky tires (coughbridgestonecough) on specialized wheels to the experts and their high-tech machines with a zillion helper arms. After two years they probably haven't paid for themselves in pure tire mounting costs, but if you combine those costs with the time spent away from the desk and running tires and wheels around town then the math seems really favorable. Plus the sheer convenience of flipping, or mounting a set of takeoffs for a practice day that we might not otherwise mount, or being able to throw a few different sizes of tires on a set of wheels and se how they fit on a car in real time. All that adds up to make the gear even more useful than we thought it might be.
Obviously we're kind of a special case, but we probably don't use get more use out of the stuff than someone who's running 2-3 times a month, or chasing a championship and always needing to have the right rubber on the right wheels.
I'm with JG on this.
Now instead of pissing away a couple of hours dealing with the knuckleheads at the shop. Or having them have to know what car it's for so they can put it in their system only to then tell me they can't mount 13" Hoosiers on a set of Minilites because they aren't the OEM size for a Spitfire, I just change them myself in less than the time it would take me to haul them elsewhere.
Not having to deal with the stupid people who work at the average tire shop is worth substantially more than the price of the machines. Tire changes went from an annoying problem to deal with, to a handful of minutes in the shop.
You'll need to log in to post.
