Tire Changing at Home
 

Judging by how many videos are already on YouTube about the Harbor Freight tire changer, I thought I would take the plunge and start changing my own tires, instead of relying on Discount Tire Co. DTC is good, but their fees are getting out of hand and I've had a couple of instances where they could have repaired a puncture, but replaced the tire instead, at my expense.

This video covers the installation of the unit in the concrete floor of my garage. That process was not problem free, but I was able to overcome the problems that using concrete anchors present (position accuracy & hitting pebbles). Some people put the stand on a shipping pallet, 2x4's etc. But I wanted something that took up a minimum amount of room.

I thought my B&D Matrix drill would be up to the task, but it could not blast thru the pebbles in the concrete. There are bigger & better hammer drills available to rent, but I wanted to see if I could use cold chisels and (eventually) my mini sledge hammer to break thru the pebbles :) Renting a bigger drill would have been better.

In the text under the video, there are links to the other video files showing me changing the tires. Could not figure out how to use the Harbor Freight tire lever to install the final bead as it kept twisting in my hand. But fortunately, I have some regular tire levers from changing my motorbike tires. They worked. And I did not break the TPMS device inside the tire.

Just thought if you were looking for a winter time project, it can work. Have to find a way to protect aluminum rims though, still working on a cheap method for that.

You Tube

As of this posting, I've changed 6 tires, all good, no leakers.
The initial cost of the parts reached break even on the 4th tire, compared to the cost of the same tire at DTC when you crank in their fees and warrantee.
Plus if a tire gets a nail, I can fix it with an internal radial patch and mushroom plug

awesome! I used HF changer for all my motorcycle tyres. Have it mounted to 4'x4' plywood platform. Gonna try auto tyres next.

What do you use for balancing wheels afterwards?

HF has a bubble balancer, which may or may not be very good - seems to be a little insensitive and the bubble in the middle is hard to see. Been thinking about setting up some kind of laser level to find the high point on the tire then try weights at the high spot to make it level. So far I've been able to put back on the clip on weights I've taken off. Did get some stick on weights for alloy wheels. I'll be doing my kids cars too, so 6 total - good job I'm retired.

For bike tires, I just put the axle back in the wheel with the nut, then suspend it between 2 saw horses. A bit of WD40 on the bearing seals lets it spin quite freely.

For both auto and bike I do a prelim balance of just the rim with no weights and mark the heavy spot with a bit of blue tape. Then line up the yellow dot to the tape. Seems to cut down on the amount of weight that needs to be added.

I found doing car tires easier than bike tires - at least on steel rims. My FZ-09 alloy wheels have no drop center like a steel car rim does. Makes it really hard.

This link helped me winnow down the number of on-line tire sellers. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/t...-tires-online/
I still buy tires from DTC if their price is good. Prices seem to change from week to week. Used priority tire for one purchase, they ship from back east so slow.

Yeah, I do similar, but find both heavy spot on rim AND tyre, then position them opposite to minimise imbalance:

- find heavy spot on rim, mark it and balance it out so rim is perfectly balanced

- mount tyre any which way and find heavy spot and mark it. most of time, it's not opposite yellow or red dot at all! After all, dots are applied by a human

- unmount tyre, remove rim-weight and re-mount tyre with measured heavy spot on rim opposite from measured heavy spot on tyre

I've found this way typically requires no or very little weight at very end to balance

Just found out the Harbor freight bubble balancer has several flaws (at least the one I have does).

Played with different solutions all day yesterday as the duct tape concentricity fix, didn't end the issue with the wheel not balancing when lifting the wheel, rotating it 90 degrees and putting it back down.
I think I have it solved and I will post another video if the solution works out right, when I re-balance the other 3 tires today.

Hint: Have to re-center the wheel support ring with the lug nut holes.

After applying the solution, not sure it really works as I still had trouble balancing the other 3 wheels and getting consistent readings each time.
Need to come up with a better solution.

Took a while, but I think I have a method to do at home vertical wheel balancing that doesn't require a $6,000 machine

That's pretty innovative!!! So awesome!! :)

Shame I bought the wrong hub - DOH!!!
I did check over all the corolla wheels (with original tires on still) 2 were good, 1 needed 1/2 oz of weight, the other took 1 1/2 oz of weight (shown in video)

I did end up buying an XB rear hub, hoping to replicate what I did with the corolla hub.
Soon found out that this particular hub (google link) had too much internal pre-load / friction to allow the hub to spin freely after removing the bearing seal.
It took a long time removing the swaged over part of the shaft with pretty much hand tools, but I did finally get there (well mostly). It doesn't turn as freely as the corolla hub ( google link ) but was good enough to get me within 1/2oz I think. The HF bubble balancer was way off, no wonder it vibrated so badly at 75mph.
Rebalanced all 4 tires and road tested up to 80, smooth as silk.
This hub seems to be the same size as other cars my kids have, so hopefully it will come in useful.

The tire changer comes in handy when you get a puncture as well.
Discount tire says they will fix them for free, but recently my experience has been that they just put a new tire on and expect you to pay full whack for the tire.
so (have I posted this before??). Several months later, no leaks. Pressure goes up and down along with the other tires

Just re-tired a set of alloy rims for our Corolla. Those are harder and provide a new set of issues.
The stem clamp to hold the wheel down doesn't work - need to come up with a spacer of some sort - or bolt the wheel down to the stand.
The hardboard rim protector I came up with, also didn't really work and was pretty much destroyed by the time I was done. I did see a youtube

video from Japan

of a guy who put a strip of PVC on the long lever tip. Looks promising. Grainger sells nylon sheets embedded with MDS (Molybdnum DiSulphide) AKA dry lube.
Hmmm

As for balancing tires...
There is a guy from the UK who had the idea of using a large glass ball, taped to the pilot on the wheel and then resting that assembly on a short tower supporting a flat ceramic tile. He says the tile needs to be level, but then the ball auto centers any size wheel and he uses a self leveling laser with weights on the tire to get it level.
Very nice low cost solution!
Wish I had seen that before investing in the hubs!!

This rabbit hole is deep eh!
I've replicated what the UK guy suggested and was able to balance / check balance the tires I had previously balanced on the vertical rig
Looks like it worked on the XB's steel wheels. But I tried putting an alloy wheel on the setup from my corolla and it didn't work at all.
It seems to be sensitive to the wheels CG location

That's pretty cool!

I was wondering if there's a hanging method that would work with laser-level? Take hub and drill hole exactly in centre and hang wheel so it's able to spin and rock like with glass ball?

I saw a video of a very likable guy using a plastic funnel and knotted rope to suspend a wheel off his Fiat Panda (small car). He was then going to measure how level it was, but his method was fraught with problems and he said after a trial balance, the car still vibrated at 60 km/hr. (37mph) He probably had more wrong with the car than just wheels
Deep rabbit hole

Yeah, problem with funnel in that set-up is you can't install wheel exactly 90-degrees to funnel axis. Therefore, rope's contact point will not be in centre of wheel.

That's why you need to locate wheel on 2-axes. The HF had good idea with spring-loaded ring to keep wheel 90-degrees to cone, but its implementation was horrible.

Perhaps design similar to dynamic spin balancers would work:

1. ring for seating surface should be fixed, not spring-loaded
2. center should have large diameter threaded rod, precisely positioned
3. cone to centre wheel, threads down to clamp wheel in place
4. top of cone has bubble level

Agreed! And there is a 5th need - cheap

I found this video. I think starting with something better than HF balancer might make things easier. Really don't like spring-loaded platform.

He's doing essentially the same thing as I was showing in post#13.
It's a good idea and can work providing the steel ball he uses is concentric with the cone. I think the tape he wraps around the ball should ensure it isn't concentric.
Any concentricity error needs to be multiplied by the weight of the wheel-tire assy, then divided by the radius of where the balance weights are placed, to find the effect.

The smaller ball will help with the CG location issue noted with the corolla alloy wheel.
Then he is still using the frame that may or may not load the wheel perpendicular to the cone axis.
The glass ball loads directly on the wheel pilot lead in chamfer, eliminating all kinds of introduced errors, but it does suffer the CG instability issue.

In post #11, there is a modified HF tire lever. I did do this to mine and got to try it out on the wheels off my 1100G
7 minute video on how I modified it

video on how I modified

Then I got to use it on the bike wheels

got to use it on the bike

after getting some help and making a few mods like putting a nice taper on the plastic tip to sneak it in under that tricky 2nd bead.
It works, even with the PVC pipe I used.
Now I just need a (cheap, easy to make) tool to attach to the HF tire lever to stop it twisting out of my hands when trying to install a tire - slowly working on that too.

After making up a new tire removal & Install tool, I have relegated the harbor freight tool for use with the bead breaker only.
Here's a link to a bike forum where I laid out the story (trying to convince the OP that the murphy veggie oil soap works as a tire lubricant)
But I will drop this picture, taken after patching the puncture and the tire re-install.
It did take 2 of use to use it, but it did work easily. This is a 19" wheel off my sons CX5
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.sci...2e6db08d8f.jpg