Where do you buy tires? What brands to avoid.

[WinterDeere]

On my M9's breaking the bead takes a special air operated bead breaker. You ain't gonna break them with ordinary tire irons.

There are a lot of quarries in our area, and so there's a local tire business that supports all those enormous quarry trucks, some with tires that must be over 10 feet tall and 4 feet wide. They use what look like 10 lb. sledge hammers, but with a pointed bit on the back, like a maul but with the cutting bit turned 90 degrees to the handle.

According to the worker who did my truck tires, a few guys working in a circle pounding on the bead, even pops those monster tires, after several minutes. I've never seen them do one that large myself, but watched them use the same method on one of my pickup trucks that had 40" x 17" tires on 15" x 14" rims.

My method of bead breaking is to use my FEL bucket edge. Just place wheel on ground under FEL, with bucket edge on sidewall, an inch from the rim, then lower and press. I'll usually use a wood block, so I can focus pressure on bead, rather than just pressing down on the whole tire, but it seems most don't even bother with this. Works every time, but a little tricky when the tire you're changing is on your only tractor with an FEL.

Others use a bottle or scissor jack between the tire and the frame of their pickup, if their pickup is high enough. Same thing, tire laying flat on ground, jack on sidewall near rim.

 

[LouNY]

I'm afraid to even ask the size.

A couple of years ago during cool fall weather I broke down and patched an 20.8-38, putting a boot inside the tire and patching the old tube. It is certainly a job I would not look forward too but it is quite possible for an individual to do. We never unbolt the rim from the tractors work on them while mounted.

We used to use and have good luck with the Titans but the last few years Titan has lost much of there reputation a lot of sidewall cracking from lots of people. My Branson has Titans on it the rears are still looking good the fronts have alot of cracks showing.

 

[LouNY]

On my M9's breaking the bead takes a special air operated bead breaker. You ain't gonna break them with ordinary tire irons.

The air or air/hydraulic are a little faster and easier but these will definitely do the job, it is similar to what I use;

 

[N80]

On my M9's breaking the bead takes a special air operated bead breaker. You ain't gonna break them with ordinary tire irons.

We broke them with sledge hammers.

 

[ssgp2]

On my M9's breaking the bead takes a special air operated bead breaker. You ain't gonna break them with ordinary tire irons.

Maybe, but this post isn’t about your M9. It’s about another members L4400, that just happens to use the same tire size that one of mine uses.

 

[HayFarmer]

One of the tire manufacturers on Amazon is BKT. It is an Indian company. The tires are made in Mexico. They make OEM tires for John Deere and JCB. The ones I need are $135 each. Free delivery.

I'm considering ordering these and mounting them myself. If they turn out to be garbage then I'll be out less than a single Goodyear.

I use BKT tires with no problem.

 

[repete]

There are competitive industry actions that cause each company to stick pretty close to an accepted norm. Something is not right to have one tire that's the same size as another and be 3" taller.

This needs to be figured out PDQ and the correct size put on. The price of a tire is likely chump change compared with front axle gears and hubs.

I have written a number of posts and threads on TBN and there are other discussions about the "front end ratio" and relationship of front tire size to rear tire size. Just search for them.

I would love to find the "industry norms" but I can find nothing with my searches. I totally get the ratio F to R and thus never use 4WD on hard surfaces, ever.

 

[crhunts]

I would love to find the "industry norms" but I can find nothing with my searches. I totally get the ratio F to R and thus never use 4WD on hard surfaces, ever.

The fronts on my Kubota L4400 are worn out. Low hours on them but 20 years. They are R-1s. 8.00x16. Goodyear. I want to replace them.

But where do you buy tractor tires? I have a dealership nearby who could do everything but I'm assuming that would be very expensive. Online it looks like shipping would be expensive.

On line, Goodyear R-1s in my size seem to run over $300 each. That's more than I'd prefer to spend.

I would assume I could do this work myself? I have easy access to tire pry bars etc. I use tubes on the front so setting the bead is no problem.

I've got amazon Prime and can get free shipping on what they offer but most of it is names I don't recognize and presumably from China.

A local auto tire place has replaced tubes for me in the past but I'm not sure they can get new tires for me. I can check of course.

Also, what brands to avoid. Carlisle which is now Carlstar or something like that pops up a lot. Not sure if they are Chinese or not. I see quite a few tires made in Mexico.

Any ideas/advice much appreciated.

I’ve had good luck with Carlisle and Titan R4s on my L5030

 

[f2000ez]

Michelins. Can’t go wrong

 

[Jaygyver]

Be aware for those of you that just want to keep the OEM tire size that you've had for years, some tires sizes may go away. Found that out on my old JD 770. Firestone discontinued the front tire size on it and no one else made them either.
The 6.00x12 tires are actually almost 2 inch's taller then the 600x12 tires. I still had 80% tread on my rears so I wanted to keep the front/rear ratio as close as possible. I did run the smaller tires but even in the grass/dirt I had to pull pretty good on the 4x4 handle to disengage it.
Just out of the blue looking for the size again I actually found the right size pair of china brands, 6 ply instead of the 4 ply so made out there, looking good 3 or 4 years later.

I would imagine the smaller compact/sub compacts may have more of an issue then the larger tractors.