Difficulty of mounting a tire by hand?

[chad22]

Me and my dad have been using the trailer jack on his car hauler trailer to break the bead on tires.

What we do is have the trailer hitched to the truck and then stick the tire underneath the jack and start jacking up the trailer.

It usually works everytime. Now getting the beads to set is a b word. Yes I also cuss when trying to get some beads to set. lol

I cussed the other day while in the shop when working on my dads ford Taurus. I got the skin on the palm of my right hand caught between the nut on the strut spring compressor. I was trying to align the spring compressor up while using a wrench to loosen and tighten the night on the compressor and I got my skin caught between the nut and the compressor.

Then I dropped the darn wrench and couldn't reach it to loosen the nut to remove my hand. lol Good thing my dad was there to get me the wrench to get my hand loose. I didn't even have a cell phone with me. Next time I will.

And to make matters worse the car was up on the lift so the wrench that I dropped was really far down there. xd

Chad

 

[Egon]

Take it to a tire shop before you try it yourself!

 

[Gary Fowler]

My skin and back are worth much more that a tire shop charges to mount a tire and I have a good one about 12 miles from my house. I stopped doing that kind of work myself as soon as I started making enough money to afford someone else to do it.
I did manage to get my B 26 tire to take air without much issue the first time I broke the bead on it from failure to keep the air pressure up. No fluid in it and it is pretty small so not a big deal to handle.
As said before, the smaller the tire the more trouble it is to mount so a good tire shop is needed and a machine, tire tools just wont get it done.

 

[Finnster]

Take it to a tire shop before you try it yourself!

I just spent the last two hours fighting a seized O2 sensor that needed replacing, I'm thinking I might just take it to a shop, esp as you all are saying small tires are more difficult. I have pry bars and such, but not specialized tire irons. The tool from HF seems like a winner tho. Thanks all

 

[Egon]

It's much easier than doing it yourself.

Back when we used a sledge, blunt chisel and old sections of leaf springs for the job. Only a hand pump for pressuring up. That seemed to take forever.

 

[David Devuono]

Funny, about 20 years ago I bought an old army truck with 20 inch rims and a centre rim hole too big for most normal tire changers. I went out and bought a couple of 4 ft pry bars and when I found out (other then the weight) that is was not much more difficult then a bicycle tire I set my self up to change all my own tires. Now I have a Princess auto manual tire changer and a static balancer. The freedom to pick up tires cash and carry, service my smaller tractor and trailer tires at my own leisure is freedom.

 

[Mace Canute]

Back in the late 80s I started to race Stock Cars and I bought a manual tire changer that used an air cylinder to break the beads. That thing has more than paid for itself and has saved me a great deal of time and eliminated a great deal of inconvenience. These days I still manage to use it at least once a year it seems.

I've found the easiest/cheapest/safest way to seat the beads of a tubeless tire on a wide rim is to cut four small one by twos just long enough to spread the tire beads a little wider than the rim, insert these into the tire spreading the beads apart and leave the tire sit like this for a while. The rubber will take a new set and will press itself against the rim when you mount it and when you put air to it the beads will seat easily. The downside of course is you need to be able to leave the tire in a warm place for a couple of days to allow it to take that new set.

 

[chopped]

Good suggestion. I used to do this to auto tires. sometimes I had some where the inside and outside bead was almost hitting each other. So i would spread the beads as far as I could pull and then use a few open ended wrenches to do the same as your borards did.

Back in the late 80s I started to race Stock Cars and I bought a manual tire changer that used an air cylinder to break the beads. That thing has more than paid for itself and has saved me a great deal of time and eliminated a great deal of inconvenience. These days I still manage to use it at least once a year it seems.

I've found the easiest/cheapest/safest way to seat the beads of a tubeless tire on a wide rim is to cut four small one by twos just long enough to spread the tire beads a little wider than the rim, insert these into the tire spreading the beads apart and leave the tire sit like this for a while. The rubber will take a new set and will press itself against the rim when you mount it and when you put air to it the beads will seat easily. The downside of course is you need to be able to leave the tire in a warm place for a couple of days to allow it to take that new set.