Re: floor jack

Time for the killfile, methinks.

I thought you already had me killfiled ...

Ed is just pissed because people are noticing that the liberal narrative is collapsing . And if exposing high crimes and misdemeanors and the people that support them is demeaning , I'm all for it .

Haha Trump is collapsing. Taking a personal shot in a home repair thread just shows your lack of class,

Not wanting to be ruled by a dictator does not make someone a liberal.

Like most of us here Ed is old. I was lamenting to my doctor just yesterday that I have the knowledge and tools to do things but physical abilities are now diminished. So we might be able to advise on it but not do it ourselves anymore.

TDS has clouded your mind and you believe all the crap the main line media has fed you.

As far as Trump the democrats have followed Alinsky's Rules for Radicals one of which is to accuse others of what you are doing. When he first ran Obama put the FBI on bugging his campaign over phony Russian collusion. Then the FBI raided his home in Mar-a-Lago for saved documents where Biden got a pass on the same charge. These are things dictator does but you ignore them.

That's a good point in that we're all getting old (I'm an octogenarian myself) and we've all been on Usenet for decades, where this particular newsgroup long ago turned into alt.political.crusades for liberals.

I've noticed that a whole bunch of nntp admins have put this specific newsgroup on their blacklist. Why I don't know. But it's likely that it's all spam now. There's probably a 1:100 ratio of on-topic conversations.

You bring up a good point that liberals want everyone to conform, and DIY'ers, as a general habit, don't conform to what those liberals want.

An example is changing your own tires. The liberals would likely want to outlaw it. Too dangerous, they'd say.

But what's interesting is Harbor Freight has been selling these DIY tire-changing and balancing tools for years, right?

Harbor Freight isn't stupid. Harbor Freight, like any low-cost, aims for efficient inventory management. Items that sell slowly tie up capital and storage space, right?

So these items must be selling, right? That means someone must be buying these tools every day, right?

I suspect they drop a product like a hot potato that doesn't sell, right? So we have to assume that someone is buying them relatively frequently.

How frequently? I don't know.

Once a month? Once a week? Once a day? I don't know how frequent. But we do know that Harbor Freight is known for its value pricing. This strategy relies on high volume, so they need to move a lot of product.

Wikipedia says HF has 1,500 stores.

Let's assume every store sells at least one of each of these tools a day. That's 365 per store per year times 1,500 which is half a million per year.

There are roughly 120 million adult males in the USA at the moment. (500,000 / 120,000,000) * 100 = approximately 0.416%

So less than 1/2 of one percent of the men out there DIY their own tires using Harbor Freight tools (by that estimate, admittedly full of unknowns).

Since HF isn't the only company out there selling these tools, we can maybe assume that it's closer to 1% of the men out there who DIY their tires.

That would mean only 1 out of 100 people who post to this ng DIY tires. Which is about right, don't you think?

The rest, are liberals. :)

Being an octogenarian, I agree with you in that I no longer fix the roof or climb into the water tanks to clean them (I'd probably never get out now).

If cutting a tree limb is higher than a step ladder will do, I might ask for help now. And I tie the garbage cans to the trunk latch to drag them.

I'd still like to find a way to drag a garbage can UPHILL that is filled to the brim with the wood chips that the arborists left on the hillside!

Having grandkids, I'm rather familiar with excuses for why they didn't do things, but, having made many excuses myself, I recognize them as such.

It's highly likely that the poster (I think it was Ed, but it doesn't matter as everyone who doesn't do things makes the same excuses - even me!) never mounted and balanced a tire in his life - so he's been making those excuses so long that he actually believes them (just like my grandkids do also).

But I'd make the same excuses if you asked me why I don't bake a cake. The difference is that this isn't a rec.food.baking ng, but a DIY ng. :)

Keeping on topic, think about how inefficient that is, although I do the same if you asked me to bake a cake.

I'd go to the bakery. And buy the cake. Already baked.

a. I get in the car & drive to the bakery b. I wait in line and choose from their inventory c. If they don't have the cake I want, I go home, empty handed (Or, more likely, I pick the least onerous cake they do have in stock)

It's the same as the bakery for me for people who "go to a tire store". They end up with whatever tire the tire store happens to have in stock.

They don't care to choose the cake they want nor to bake it how they like. They don't care to choose the tire they want nor to mount it how they like.

There's nothing wrong with going to the bakery and getting whatever cake happens to be on stock just so that you can come home with a baked cake.

But you shouldn't deprecate those who bake their cake to their liking just because you've never baked a cake by yourself in your entire life.

Same with tires...

You shouldn't deprecate those who choose the best tires at the best price and mount and balance them to their satisfaction, just because you can't.

You only need to answer only a single question for me to understand why you exploded with that unwarranted tirade in what was a pleasant dialogue.

Have you ever mounted and balanced a SUV tire on your own or not?

If you compare changing a tire yourself to baking a cake, you are effed up. I've baked many cakes, never changed a tubeless tire on a wheel.

Nowhere did I deprecate those that do Their choice.

I'm 73 , I still go out in the woods and cut down trees for firewood and then split and stack it . I also change my own oil , tend a thousand square foot garden , bee hives , walk the dog twice a day for a total of just over a mile , and in about 3 weeks I'll be getting started on putting siding (1x10 rough cut pine board and batten from a local sawmill) on the house I'm building . In the last 3 weeks I have also had 18 tons of crushed gravel delivered which I and my trusty old JD yard tractor have spread into a very nice driveway with circular turnaround . Now that I have a nice smooth driveway I plan on riding the Harleys more - it's a real bitch maneuvering an 800 lb touring bike on rough ground . I watched a good friend retire and go to the couch , he died a little over a year later . I'm going to keep on keepin' on until I either make a fatal mistake or just can't do it any more . I figure at my age a rocking chair is more deadly than a chainsaw ...

When my cake is almost all gone , I call the bakery (my wife in this case) and tell them what kind of cake I want . I do the same with tires , call the tire store and tell them what I want . And then when they come in Bill (my friend the tire guy and mechanic shop manager) calls me and I go have them installed . In the past I have mounted and balanced them myself , but now days I choose to have it done . Not because I can't but because they do it faster and better for a very reasonable charge .

Hats off ! to you. .. wish I could say the same. I don't see anyone here in this group, picking on old people who are active, though .. .. it's something to be encouraged and admired. A person saying that he pays for tire changes - doesn't mean that he is critisizing someone who is able to do his own. .. carry on, smoke 'em if you got 'em. John T.

I understand what you do because most people find some way to get the job done, which means everyone who doesn't do it, pays someone to do it.

And then when they

It's no different really, than how most people find a way for a birthday cake to arrive on the dining room table once a year for each family member.

As an octogenarian myself, I've also given up many a DIY job I used to do all by myself. When I'm on the roof, I no longer feel safe for example.

Likewise when I'm limbing trees, although I can still buck a trunk myself.

As with mounting & balancing tires at home, the professionals may certainly do it faster (in terms of where you start & end your clock), but they never do it better. That machine is brutal on alloy wheels & they skip steps like match mounting and prebalancing the wheel without the tire on it (which takes too much time since they only care about money - nothing else but $).

I agree their charge, at around $20 per tire (plus or minus five bucks or so) is only the roughly about half the cost of an equal quality tire (give or take a lot of slop in prices as their price is rarely close to online).

Even when tire stores price match online outfits (such as Amazon) you still need stores to order & ship them using their daily shipping mechanisms.

If you count the true time involved, it's faster to do it at home but that's never why you do any DIY job. You do it for the fun of doing it.

Those who don't have fun doing DIY make up endless excuses just so they can avoid admitting to themselves a true reason is simply they don't like DIY.

And that's OK. Just don't lie about why, that's all.

I knew already you had never mounted & balanced a tire by yourself, so it's exemplary, but wholly unnecessary that you openly admitted that's why you made all those unbelievably lame excuses for why you dislike that DIY task.

You've never done it. And that's OK.

I have baked a cake, although nobody save for the starving would eat it, and I don't blame them, as you'd need a jackhammer to break off a piece.

Given I've done both tasks, I'd judge the technical complexity to be on about the same level of skill & knowledge needed (assuming the tools).

For the few tires needing changing, it is much easier to pay to have it done. Bought 4 tires in the past 7 or 8 years, won't for another few. It is work I don't care to do.

Next week though, I'll bake another cake like this one. Everyone enjoys it when they get some.

Nobody would ever argue that DIY is harder than paying someone else to do it. There's an old saying "Let someone else do the heavy lifting."

But I stick with "If you want something done right, do it yourself."

Your argument is similar to "Why buy a cow when you can buy the milk?"

But when it comes to cost, mine is "A penny saved is a penny earned."

Two sides of the same coin. Neither is better. Neither is worse. They're different.

Certain techniques, like "creaming" butter and sugar, require proper execution to achieve the desired texture just as match mounting does.

Overmixing or undermixing can lead to dense or tough cakes, just as much as adding too many or two few weights in the wrong places affects balancing.

Simple frosting is relatively easy, but elaborate decorating with fondant or intricate piping requires skill & practice, just as breaking a bead does.

When I saw that photo, I went downstairs to the kitchen to snap a picture of the wife's cake, but it was all gone (damn kids, raiding the pantry).

Suffice to say the technical complexity of mounting and balancing tires at home are not appreciably different from that of baking a nice bundt cake.

Ever stud your own tires? It probably was sixty years ago or so but the snow tires I bought had holes for studs but were not studded. I recall being able to buy the studs and the tool to push them in a Montgomery Wards.

It wasn't a complicated tasks but I'm wondering if anyone else ever did it.

I don't remember ever baking a cake other than cornbread, but I used to bake bread. I probably could bake a credible cake but I haven't eaten cake in ages.

As I said earlier, I do mount my own tube type tires but I don't have the high volume of air that is sometimes needed to seat the bead on tubeless. Years ago I bought tires for the Harley from an indie. Even with the high flow setup he had a hell of a time getting the bead to seat as the sun was setting in the west. That convinced me I didn't want to try the task.

Your solution is simple: move out of California.

Of course, then you can rail at gas-can manufacturers for refusing to make two different kinds, just like the rest of us.