mounting & dismounting your own tractor tires

[Skyco]

I lag bolt my HF tire changer down to the deck with a cordless impact driver. When done I take it back up.

I wonder if the securing ring broke for the OP because he is applying a tremendous amount of pressure trying to break beads with the tire mounted on the changer. Use it as designed and it works well, for me anyway.

Tires slipping on the wheel after installing? Not if you use the correct lube, and BTW soap isn't it. I use a tire mounting fluid, which is a type of vegetable oil emulsion. I've never, ever had a tire rotate on the rim after mounting, most tires come with a little paint circle indicating the light spot which you line up with the valve stem. Pretty obvious if the tire slipped as it no longer lines up. Get the fluid, it is inexpensive, I've been on the same gallon for probably 10 years.

 

[aczlan]

Personally, I wish every air-impact-wrench in the country was thrown to the bottom of Loch Ness; many is the brake-rotor or set of wheel-studs that have been ruined by over-zealous use of them.
Not one of twenty tire-monkeys know or care how to properly install a wheel.

Too true, whenever I get tires installed the tire shop ONLY sees the rims, they never see the car.

As for spin-balancing:
It costs me not a cent to balance my wheels every day if I so choose, and I have NOT balanced a wheel on any of my personal vehicles in years.

You must have better luck with tires than I do, I have yet to have a set of tires that didnt need to be balanced in order to keep them from vibrating all over the place. Some have been better than others, but every set of tires that have gone on my or my parents cars have had to be balanced or they make the vehicle vibrate at high speeds. This spring we took my parents 15 passenger van (Ford E350 w/7.3L Diesel) down to long island, I had to keep it at 65mph because if it hit 68mph the front end vibrated like crazy. Before driving back I stopped at walmart and had them re-balance the front tires, they were off by 2oz on one side and 3oz on the other. After that the front end vibration stopped and I could go to 70 or 75 mph (which is safer on the wonderful highways of long island). There was still a little vibration from the RR tire, but it was bearable.

You can balance to a fare-the-well, and as soon as you have to brake hard, or give it the fuel pretty good, the rim will actually slip inside the tire and the weights then be in the wrong places; unless, of course, your wheels have a good coat of rust in the bead area, in which case they will have more "grip".

A properly installed and inflated tire should not slip on the rim. If you are using the wrong lubricant (ie; something that does not dry up after the tire is installed) you could be seeing slippage.

Try it some time with a shiny new set of tires, especially big meaty 4x4 or SUV tires, as soon as the tires are mounted, make a permanent mark at each valve-stem and watch it move around from place to place as you drive.

The tires on my FIL's truck (1997 Dodge 1500 4x4, OEM 16" alloy rims and stock size BFGs on it) still have the orange dot on the side of the tire right next to the valve, just like they were when the tires were installed.

Aaron Z

 

[radioman]

Thanks for finding that.

avoid the fiber-glass and get the Hickory-handled one.

:

pardon my lack of knowledge, but why should we aviod the fiberglass and get wood type only ? does it handle better or what ?

 

[BearKiller]

As for the tires slipping around on the wheels, at the shop, we use this very expensive white tire-mounting paste that comes in open-top buckets and is pasty, not runny; it is genuine bead lube, made specifically for tire mounting.

Not every driver/vehicle/wheel/tire combination will notice tire/rim slippage.

But, if it does not ever occur, then many racers and off-roaders waste lots of time and money trying to prevent it.


Just a few days ago, a wealthy gentleman from the Chicago area pulled a fifth-wheel camper-trailer to a property he owns in our area, maybe 500-miles; he was driving a late-model F-250.

Just days before embarking on this journey, he installed a brand-new set of shiny expensive aluminum wheels and some belt-buckle-high all-terrain BFGs.

He complained of stopping along the way three different times at three different shops and having the tires balanced; they would run fine for a few miles and start vibrating again.

I personally balanced them myself while he watched and I took extra pains to do the best job the machine would allow.

He went down the road about fifteen miles and returned; same story, all was fine for a while, then the vibration returned.

I put a mark on the tires at the valves and told him to make the same test-run again; needless to say, the guy was amazed, especially with the rears.

Now, once his rims get older, with an accumulation of oxidation and pits, this situation may go away.

It doesn't happen on every vehicle, but it can and does happen too often for me to have much confidence in wheel weights that are attached to the rims.

 

[BearKiller]

pardon my lack of knowledge, but why should we aviod the fiberglass and get wood type only ? does it handle better or what ?

The Hickory will absorb the shock; whereas, the fiber-glass is not much better than just welding a heavy steel pipe in for a handle; one lick with the fiber-glass and your ears will ring and your teeth fly out.

In use, you use the hoe-looking side of the hammer and "dig" it into the union of the bead and rim.

This is sort of an acheived art that is best practiced on some old bent-up junk, before flying in on a nice looking wheel.

Hang around a big truck tire repair shop that will still service those widow-maker two-piece wheels and you will see plenty of this hammer action.

You won't see much, though, around post-1978 model trucks, as they will have 22.5 or 24.5 single-piece construction tubeless rims that will pretty much fall loose from the beads as soon as the air is out.

 

[captjack]

I change all of mine - I spent 15 years with Goodyear as a wholesaler.

2 tire irons/ duck bill hammer/ inflater(cheata) is all you need.

With this set up you can change almost anything !

 

[BearKiller]

2 tire irons/ duck bill hammer/ inflater(cheata) is all you need.

I agree, but I like the idea of the HF changer for keeping the tire/rim up off the floor/ground and also as something to hold things still so I don't have to chase it around.

 

[Sunkistdds]

The only rim I do by hand are mobile home... and that is because I have not gotten around to making an adapter for the changer.... yet.

The difference between the leverage on a 3 foot tool as you take the bead over the rim is amazing in both time and effort. For 50 bucks a tire changer for farm tires is a mandate period.

I have new car/truck tires mounted for me obviously as they don't charge and don't discount if u take them home. BTW is anyone having trouble getting free 14" tires from the tire retailers. I have a lot of 14" rims on the farm and I hope I don't have to either change to 15" or start cutting and welding 15 " on 14" centers (hub and bolts).

 

[BearKiller]

a tire changer for farm tires is a mandate period.

Two things that never cease to amaze me are :

90% of all farm equipment shares a standard bolt-pattern; i.e. all 4-lugs, 5-lugs, 6-lugs, and 8-lugs (with the exception of the huge industrial center-holes) are standard; and, so long as the lug count is the same, the wheels will interchange, regardless of rim diameter or width.

That being said, many is the full-time farmer that does not have one single spare tire/wheel, not even for the big hay-wagons that might travel the highway several miles per trip.


The second thing is how these guys will leave nine paid workers sitting in the shade, while they come into town to get a tire fixed, when they could take care of it on the spot and not lose so much time.

is anyone having trouble getting free 14" tires from the tire retailers. I have a lot of 14" rims on the farm and I hope I don't have to either change to 15" or start cutting and welding 15 " on 14" centers (hub and bolts).

A little update on the used tire situation :


Very few, probably less than one-percent of the new cars/trucks manufactured in the last twenty years have had either a 13", 14", or 15" wheel.

16"s are about to become as obsolete, with more and more 17s, 18s, and even 19s taking their place.


That being said, for the last ten years, the poor people who have no choice but to drive the worn out discards from those more fortunate are constantly combing the tire-shops and junk-yards seeking second-hand "used" 13-, 14-, and 15-inch tires, that are just not to be found, thus forcing many an old clunker to end up in the fence-row for lack of affordable tires; most of these old cars ain't worth the cost of one new tire, let alone four.

Good used tires come from wealthy people who swap them in as soon as they get dusty and wealthy people aren't driving twenty-year-old cars, hence the extinction of used tires to fit farm equipment.


Were I swapping wheel sizes, I would forget anything 13-, 14-, or 15-inch, and go with 16-inch rims; many 3/4- and 1-ton trucks, plus all goosenecks, are still out there wearing out 16-inch tires.

 

[dfkrug]

I wonder if the securing ring broke for the OP because he is applying a tremendous amount of pressure trying to break beads with the tire mounted on the changer. Use it as designed and it works well, for me anyway.

The securing bracket had only 4 fingers to grab the wheel ring, so it
distorted a bit everytime you clamped the wheel down tight. There is no
question that I contributed to it eventually breaking by putting upward
pressure on it. The "instructions" that came with the HF changer were
extremely poor. Given the configuration of the bead breaker feature, there
are only 2 ways to use it....I assume both are correct.

As for tires spinning on my wheels, I have never seen that on my vehicles,
which are often marked for valve stem position. In the eraly days, this was quite a problem with M/C tires (not mine), as hp went up. If you had tubes,
you could rip your valve stem off in a quick getaway. So wheel makers
sometimeshad inside clamps to hold the tire from spinning. There is one guy
here on TBN who thought his tractor was broken, and it was his tire spinning
on his wheel, so it does happen. It is true that it could be happening with
some tubeless tires on some vehicles without you noticing, too.

Some wheel/tire combos are very hard to balance, esp if the owner does
not want the weight placed on the visible side of their fancy wheels. I
once had a set of wheels/tires that could not be adequately balanced off the
car, so I had them spun on the car and balanced that way.