Except for one thing. After spending $500 instead of the budgeted $200 you STILL won't be able to change your tires, and you will end up tearing the beads and gouging the expensive wiener-wagon rims before you figure that out
Find a GOOD shop - they do exist. My brother's old shop tire machine doesn't even need the centers removed from your BBS wheels, and the mounting tools never touch the rim. Any hack that doesn't remove the weights BEFORE removing the tire should be shot. The "high spot" marks oftem make virtually no difference If you just take in the rims to have tires mounted, what pressure are they supposed to use? Or if you use a slightly different sized tire? YOU are responsible for testing the pressure and setting to your requirements. Anyone who doesn't torque the bolts properly should be shot. They are "hacks" not "technicians" You likely bent the rims hitting a curb or pothole - which requires more than just camber and toe to be checked on the alignment.
Your problem is you are going to a cheapeassed schlock tire shop because you are too cheap to go to the dealership. (You call it the stealership)
"If you want first quality oats you have to be willing to pay first quality prices. If you are willing to settle for oats that have been through the horse, they do come a little cheaper"
If you have to ask "how much" for ANYTHING you have no business driving a Bimmer (or a Porsche, or an Audi or a Jag or a Range Rover or a - you get the picture???
Your problems are 2, and only 2. You are CHEAP, and you don't have a clue how to use the tools.
A cheap tool in the hands of a master can be made to work reasonably well. In the hands of an amateur, it will very seldom do the job the first time - much-less stand up long term. Much better to find an OLD manual tire changer made for professional use, and have the old codger that owned it and used it for 50 years show you how to use it. Don't second guess the guy because he did it for a living, and therefore, being a mechanic or technician, cannot be trusted. I can even see you going to a Hunter rep and buying a real tire changer and then not listening to him explain what options to buy and how to use it (if you weren't so cheap)
The low profile tires are harder in my experience. And like he said the tire changer will scratch your expensive rims breaking the bead, fastening the rim to the changer, and removing and replacing the tire because it's all cheap rough steel - no plastic protectors, and no engineering behind it.
It's JUNK - and in the hands of an inexperienced user or a hack, it can do a lot of damage to itself and the rims.
On Tue, 13 Dec 2016 16:12:12 -0500, snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca advised:
How on earth are you going to get to the lug bolts *without* removing the BBS hubcaps? It's impossible. I don't know what planet you live on, but the math is strange on your planet.
Well then, a *lot* of mechanics who use the dynamic balancing "spinners" need to be shot then.
I agree with you on this.
Especially since it really only applies match mounting onto brand new wheels at the factory.
When I have my four new tires mounted and balanced, I do what everyone else does, which is *drive* the car to the shop who mounts and balances them.
They know it's a BMW. They know that the rears are different pressures from the front. But they just put in whatever their compressor is set to for all cars.
I don't blame them. They're lazy. It costs money to take time to look up the pressure per axle and to adjust the pressure.
At easily $100 to $150 an hour, they don't bother with that.
I don't use non-stock sizes but the fact remains that the tire shop puts the same pressure into everything.
What part of that don't you understand?
Yup. We agree. If you want the job done right, you have to do it yourself.
They don't even *know* the torque for your car! How are they gonna know it? They have to flip through the Mitchells or the Internet, but they don't bother.
That's my point.
It's not hard to figure out that it's 84 foot pounds per lug bolt; but it takes time and they just torque everyone to 90 or 100 foot pounds.
That's a totally different story, but even then, with 5 very soft BBS stock rims on the bimmer, I can put the *best* rims on the front and the worst rim in the trunk, which takes time that the shops just aren't gonna do at $100 to $150 an hour shop rate.
The stealer is upwards of $200/hour and to get your tires mounted and balanced at the stealer is just crazy for a 15 year old bimmer or a 20 year old Toyota.
I go to the Tire Rack Recommended Installers, which you can google and find yourself for your area. They're all about $18 to $40 per tire for a mounting and balancing in my area. I just ran a survey and posted it.
I don't understand how you can totally miss the point. Your sermon is tired and old and just does not fit the facts.
What you say is a trite old wives tale which is meaningless except to old wives.
You can do it yourself and get quality results (static only though). Or, you can pay someone and get quality results.
How much you pay has absolutely no bearing on the quality. For example, I just called the first five of the Tire Rack recommended installers, and one charges $7 plus 70 cents tax for just *disposal* alone for each tire.
None charged less than $3.50 plus 35 cents tax for disposal (not Pep Boys, Autozone, or OReilly's either).
Yet, I called Costco, and they're $1 plus ten cents tax.
Do I get a better quality disposal for my seven dollars and seventy cents? No.
Quality and price have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Period.
People only use price as an indicator of quality because they're too stupid to use a more realistic measure (like, um, the quality of the work for example).
You have so many old wive's tales muddling your thought process that you probably never once thought about what you're saying, to see if it actually makes any sense (using math that works on this planet).
You're just saying stupid clich?s which mean absolutely nothing and really are no help to anyone at all. If you want to believe in stupid clich?s, that's fine, but let's not waste everyone's time discussing stupid clich?s that are worthless and meaningless to everyone but you.
I appreciate the advice and help. I really do. But clich?s are not advice nor help. They're just wastes of our time.
And those stupid clich?s that you spout are never true anyway.
They're only true for idiots who don't know how to do math or who don't know what quality is (because that's too complicated for them than a stupid clich?, which is easy for them to understand).
On Tue, 13 Dec 2016 15:56:13 -0500, snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca advised:
What math do you use on your planet?
Pop your zip code into the Tire Rack Recommended Installer engine:
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Call up the first five in the list
Tell us what you averaged
I just priced out getting tires mounted and balanced and it's never less than $18 per tire where I live and as much as $38.50 at the first five of the tire rack recommended installers for my zip code.]
At $20 per tire (which is a reasonable estimate and which was my initial assessment) it would take two years to get my money back on $200 worth of tools.
That's assuming a new set of tires every two years for two cars, and one flat each for each car (which is pretty much what I average).
My math is pretty simple, and it checks out, so, what math are you using that says the payback on $200 worth of tools is the rest of my life?
My "Cherman" ancestry is far enough back the square corners have been knocked about as round as his bimmer rims will be after he changes the tires - - -
Attempting to pit one persons experience against another's is a good way to stir up trouble. I urge you to refrain from such questions.
I live in a warm environment which ensures the tire is more pliable then when it is cold. When we dismount tires, we use soapy warm water and a lot of patience, perspiration and military "surplus" tire spoons after the bead is broken. We also drop the tire onto concrete from several feet high and we bounce it several times after we have removed the valve core.
We don't do it often enough to justify owning one of the larger, pneumatic or hydraulic units. We also don't do this with car tires, I much prefer Costco or Discount Tire for the road vehicles. No scratching of wheels and they can dynamically balance the tires / wheels.
On Tue, 13 Dec 2016 22:41:50 +0000, Stormin' Norman advised:
Thanks for the advice to warm and bounce the tire. Someone else mentioned warming, so, since I only have the one spare wheel with me now (it's not my SUV) I have it inside the living room warming up.
I will bounce it and try again, but I wasn't able to buy the bead breaker tool from HF today (I'll do it tomorrow). I am hoping to get the SUV to work on tomorrow night if I can have it in my garage for an hour to change the four other tires (I have to move the spare too so I'll be dismounting and mounting a total of five tires even though she only bought four).
I agree with you. An air-operated unit is overkill. It's like having an alignment rack, which is overkill for home use.
Costco only sells something like two brands, and they take forever to do the tires, but they do give you free stuff like nitrogen and rotations although the free rotation is worthless because you can rotate at home in far less time than it takes at Costco.
I have taken tires and rims to Costco and asked them to dismount and mount other tires and they were happy to do it without me having purchased the tires from them.
One time I gave the guy at the counter a case of St. Pauli Girl beer and they did it all for free......
Funny you should mention that. I just got back from Fannie Mae Candies, where I purchased 8 half pound boxes of Chocolate Citrus Peel. Gifts for a wedding anniversary and Christmas. I mentioned to the young guy packing my candies that my wife would kill me if she knew I took the '93 Grand Am out of the garage in 11F weather. She just doesn't trust that car. That got him going on his all time favorite car, his '03 Grand Am. It took him about 15 minutes to pack 6 boxes (they had 2 ready to go), as we chatted about Grand Ams - and his current Chevy Cruze. Bottom line is he only charged me for 6 boxes, a full 25% discount. Nice guy, but I can't say I agree with his choice of cars.
Not ALL BBS wheels have the full caps . I was thinking the center caps used on many BBS wheels that have their nuts exposed
Every mechanic that ever worked for me removed all the weights before removing tires, and ballanced from scratch. We ballanced to 1/4 ounce
By far not everyone does that. A LOT of people have summer and winter rims, and when one set gets worn to the point they need replacement, they drop those rims off at the shop to have new tires installed when they are removed to install the other seasonals.
So they inflate them to 100-140PSI, do they???? That's what their compressor puts out.
Like I said, if that's the service you are getting that's the service you are paying for. Go to a better level of shop.
The mechanics make a hell of a lot less than that, and if you are paying that much and not getting proper service, raise hell and vote with your feet.
I don't understand where you are getting your work done and why you don't set them straight. You know how to bitch, so do it where it has a chance of doing some good.
BULLSHIT. They have a chart with the torque specs. Basically all steel rims with a given stud size use the same torque, and all alloys of that size another torque - and the torque goes up with the stud size.
Then bitch at them and vote with your feet - but I'm almost 100% positive you will screw up more than they do.
Bullshit
Again, bullshit. You say $100 to $150 an hour - if they are on the clock, they get paid, so why not take the time??? If it's flat rate, it's a different story - but they are not charing by the "hour" but by the "labour unit" - which may or may not relate closely to an hour.
Then find a good independent GARAGE to do your work, not a tire "stealership" Find a garage to do the required repairs on your vehicle that you can trust - then trust them to do the job. That doesn't mean don't check up on them - it just means trust them to do the job, and let them know you are happy with them when they do, and that you are not when they don't
And you are getting shitty work for that price.
I didn't say how much you pay necessarily has a bearing on the quality - only that if you just shop by price, don't be surprized if the oats have already been therough the horse.\
And it's NOT "old wive's tales" - I was a service manager at a dealership for 10 years - my retention rate was never under 90%, and exceded 100% for over 5 years. Loosely, that means if the dealership sold 300 cars over the last 3 years, more than 300 customers brought their cars to me for service at least twice a year. It's a bit more complex than that - but it's based on how many vehicles were still coming back for service 3 years after they were sold - and that was back when the warranty was only one year.
That also means customers who didn't like the service they were getting at another dealer voted with their feet and came to me instead. And that was just our toyota customers. We also serviced a fair number of non-toyotas because we had an excellent reputation for service. There has got to be another dealership (or garage) who can provide that kind of service.
I also had lots of customers like you. Bitch, Bitch Bitch BITCH. Didn't matter what you did for them, they were never satisfied - and I could see right away when they came in what kind of trouble they were going to be in most cases. They came in counting on being screwed - they expected it, and no matter what you did, they considered themselves to have been screwed. I had to tell a few of them if they didn't trust me to look after their vehicles, they were not only welcome, but encouraged, to take their bitchiung somewhere else.
Ha Ha Ha. I've changed tires with nothing but tire irons. I've used the cheap manual changers. I've used "professional" manual changers made in the fifties, and I've used several different high tech power changers. I've changed tires from 4" to 50+ inch tires - car tires from 10 inch Mini tires to 20 inchers - including clinchers, as well as split rim and split ring truck tires, and tractor and industrial equipment tires on 2 continents, and on vehicles from 1928 vintage to the 2000's. I haven't done it for a living for the last 26 years or so, but I've still done a fair number of them. Would I waste my money on one of those tire changers to do my own? Not as long as I lived within 10 miles of a real tire machine. I've balanced tires with bubble ballancers, high speed on-car ballancers, high speed and low speed off-car balancers I've aligned cars with clip-on bubble level aligners, visualiners, acculiners, and computerized alignment machines, Would I use a bubble balancer to balance the wheels on my own vehicles today? Not on your life. When I change my own steering parts I line the front up to "reasonably close" and then drive it over to a local shop and pay them to do an accurate alignment. - and i KNOW how to do it. One place I worked we had a "slip guage" that told us when we drove a car into the shop if the alignment was apppreciably out - and that test was done free of charge to every vehicle that came in the door.
I buy my tires from a reputable local dealer who gets to make the markup on the tires, and charges me $15 canadian to install and balance them. I'm not a cheap-ass who believes he can always get a better deal on-line. I give my business to local businesses - owned by my neighbours, who employ my neighbours and pay local taxes in my community.. That goes for tires, appliances, and just about everything else I buy. If it is available locally, I buy locally. I'm not a rich man - but I make my living here, and I believe my nieghbours should be able to make their living here too. That means sometimes I pay a few dollars more than buying from out of the area - but on the whole I believe I'm getting as good value for my money locally as I would getr anywhere.
As far as getting your money back, I truly don't believe you will ever make your money back on your DIY tire changing and alignment schemes - because you WILL screw up more than you save. Virtually guaranteed. You have proven you don't understand what is involved.
On Mon, 12 Dec 2016 23:45:12 +0000 (UTC), Frank Baron advised:
The main problem is simply that I have a tough tire (a 108T, which is a pretty thick SUV tire compared to much easier passenger car tires), and that the harbor freight tire-changing tool requires modification to work on such tough tires without bending.
I took my time to document what I learned so that the next person who uses the same equipment can benefit from the 20/20 hindsight this tutorial provides them for how to use the harbor freight tire changer to: a. Break the lower bead of the old tire away from the wheel b. Break the upper bead of the old tire away from the wheel c. Remove the upper bead of the old tire from the wheel d. Remove the lower bead of the old tire from the wheel e. Remove the old Schrader valve and stem assembly f. Insert the new Schrader valve and stem assembly g. Place the lower bead of the new tire on the wheel h. Place the upper bead of the new tire on the wheel i. Align the red (or yellow) dot to the valve stem (or to the wheel match-mounting mark) j. Seat the beads by filling the tire with air k. Check the valve stem clearance, match mounting marks, and adjust pressure to normal psi
The goal is that they start knowing all the things that I just learned today, which make the job far easier and which makes the tools work far better.
The first thing I did was straighten out the bent bead-breaking wedge bars, which was so easy to do one might conclude that they're actually made of rubber.
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What the bead breaker shovel needs, from the start, is a bit of support, which is shown here (but after using it, I realized it needs to be about 2 inches from the top of the wedge to leave clearance for the rim of the wheel when breaking beads).
Luckily this wedge simply moved out of the way because it was just press fit in and wrapped with solid 120V copper wire. (Given more time, I would not weaken the bars any further by drilling bolt holes - but - I would strap in a rectangular block of wood instead of this fence post, which just happened to be handy.)
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I started on the inside bead, which I'm told, is the harder one to break.
By moving the Clovis pin to the outside adjustment hole (making the angle about 90 degrees to the tire), and with this artificially strengthened wedge, I was (finally) able to apply (far) more force on the 108T tire bead without the wedge slipping off the bead itself.
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The fence post got in the way of the rim as shown in this photo, so, if you permanently mount it, make sure it's shorter by about 2 or 3 inches than the space allotted, and make sure it's mounted up high and not low where mine is now.
Notice how the wooden block hits the rim? You don't want that.
You want the block to stay higher up, away from the rim by a couple of inches. But, in this case, it didn't matter because the block moved when pressure was placed on it.
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The stronger wedge plus the 90 degree angle from using the furthest-out of the 3 adjustment pin holes allowed me to apply enough force to finally pop the inside-rim bead of the admittedly strong 108T tire sidewall.
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Only after I popped the underside tire bead did I try to remove the lever arm, where I found that it bent at about a 10 or 15 degree angle. It took that much force, but you have to also realize that this harbor freight metal is soft as rubber.
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After straightening the bent tire iron as much as I could, and after moving the clovis pin to the center hole to get more of an angle, and using a tire iron to keep a depressed bead down, I easily popped the upper bead.
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Placing the tire iron flat step with the step side up, allowed me to start spinning the top bead off the wheel rim without lubrication:
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Adding dish detergent helped a lot to spin the top bead off, where I'd say it's a requirement to have lubrication but everything gets slippery, even the tools, so try to keep it off the tools.
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You repeat the process for the lower bead, with the tire iron again going in step-side up as in the first bead (the same way as it did for the upper bead).
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Once the tire was off the rim, I cut off the old 1-1/4 inch tire valve from the underside with a utility knife, where the old valve was in surprisingly good shape, so I might have kept it had I not wanted to test out the 4-way valve-seating tool and the fit of the longer new 1-1/2 inch long tire valves.
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After lubricating the new 1-1/2 inch valve with dish soap, I threaded on the 4-way tool and pulled it through so easily that it was shockingly simple.
Later you'll see I have a much better idea to replace that silly 4-way tool that I already have in my compressor toolbox, so I never needed the silly
4-way tool in the first place, but I didn't realize that until later.
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Only later, when I was filling the tire with air, did I realize that a handy tool for pulling the valve would have been my compressor football/soccer-ball needle-valve tool, with the needle valve removed, which spins onto the valve threads with ease and which has a nice trigger handle to grab onto so that the valve can be pulled into place.
But I didn't think of this at the time I was seating the first valve, so, it's just a lesson learned for the future, and for someone else who happens to read this for hints on how to do the job without that silly 4-way valve seating tool (which is never needed).
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The bottom bead of the new tire went on 3/4 of the way by hand, and then with a two-foot tire iron, the last quarter went on relatively easily.
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It's important to remember to flip the tool and set the hook side appropriately because you're not going to seat the top bead unless you have the tool oriented this way exactly. (Lord knows what the other tip is use for.)
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You'll want to ensure you seat the bead at the tire-valve first because that last quarter gets dicey where you have to use the most strength in the whole job, and where a slippery bar gets obnoxious.
I had to vise grip the end of the bar that I was holding because it kept twisting off the bead but with vise grips, it was manageable.
At the very least, you'll want to use vise grips to hold the slippery upper bead from slipping off as you try to force the last 1/4 of the upper bead onto the rim.
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This is the point where you're extremely glad the tool is firmly bolted to cement, as the force is as much as you can give it.
Even so, I found I had to ditch the slippery but huge red pry bar and resort to two 24-inch tire irons to leverage the remaining upper bead over onto the wheel rim.
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It's at this point, before you fill the tire with air, that you line up the red dot to the match-mounting marks, or, the yellow dot to the valve stem (if there is no red dot) or if there is a red dot but no match mounting marks, then you line up the red dot to the valve stem.
After doing that, I first removed the inner valve stem of the Schrader valve and tried to use my latching air chuck, but without the valve stem, the darn chuck wouldn't pass any air (so I gave up on this method).
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It was dark and drizzly when I just decided to put the valve stem back in and put the latching chuck back on (although later I found a neat trick that I will try with the next tire).
It turns out that having the valve stem in or out really made no difference whatsoever, it seems, with respect to getting the air inside and getting the bead to seat.
The trick to seating the bead is really to have two hands free to hold the tire edges and jiggle, wiggle, coerce, tug and jerk the tire as it's loose when you're trying to get the bead to seat.
Once you get the tire in a certain position, you can just feel it starting to blow up, where it seats and finally pops a few times as you work up the pressure to 40, 50, and 60 psi.
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Further proof that the silly 4-way tool is worthless is the fact that it doesn't have a pin for letting the air out of the valve to drop the pressure down from 60 psi back to 40 where it belongs.
Rummaging around in my compressor kit, I found this needle-valve which is normally used to inflate footballs and soccer balls, but which deflates the tire without sharp points like those that are on the silly and useless
4-way tool.
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It was at this point that I realized that the football/soccerball inflator handle can be used for the next tire to inflate the tire quickly without the schrader valve being in place, so I will try it this way on the next tire to see if it works.
(It may require a third hand to press the trigger, but I can probably wire the trigger pressed because both hands will be needed to coerce the tire into momentarily seating while the air is filling it up.)
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At this point it's time to make two checks of the valve stem.
Ensure the red (radial runout) dot is at the valve stem Ensure with a straight edge that the valve doesn't stick out past the rim
Since it was dark, I didn't bother looking for match mounting marks on the old rim, so, I simply lined up the red dot with the tire valve since the red dot indicates the tire's high point for radial runout and radial force variation, which takes precedence over the yellow dot which indicates the tire's light spot which would have been paired with the valve stem on the wheel which is the wheel's heavy spot had the red dot not existed.
I found a way to shore up the harbor freight tire changer so that it works on the tougher 75-series 108T SUV tires (60 series passenger tires would be far easier) and posted that as a response to the original post.
One question though, is what tool do you guys recommend for removing the old crimp on wheel weights?
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