Putting a car tire on myself was a real struggle!

[Gryphon Rider]

After many hours spread out over several days, I finally figured out a system to get a worn out car tire dismounted and a new one mounted on my rear rim.  Most of my time was spent trying methods that others on the web have shown to work well with motorcycle tires, but didn't work with my car tires which apparently have much stiffer beads than motorcycle tires.  I ended up copying some ideas, modifying others, and coming up with one or two of my own.  I'm just glad I avoided damaging my rim in the process.

I'll provide details of my methods after I finish the whole reassembly procedure later today, but to summarize:  If you are only going to dismount/mount tires whenever your single motorcycle with a car tire requires it, it's worth it to find a shop that will do it for you for $50.  Now that I have a system that works, I'm anticipating being able to use it to change my cage tires as well in order to justify all the effort I put in.

[Garland]

I started mounting my tires a few years ago after running into resistance getting shops to mount a car tire. I have done two GTTs so far. The first time was a horror, the last time not so bad. I am looking forward to seeing if you have found any easier methods. The youtube videos I've seen make it look awfully easy, but the car tires are anything but for me- the front tire is a snap by comparison.

[old2soon]

Gryphon Rider-found a custom chooper shop in my neck of the woods gets $5 a wheel. That is reasonable in anybodys language or money. I also realize it don't help you much but felt the need to chime in. RIDE SAFE.

[Valker]

Gryphon Rider-found a custom chooper shop in my neck of the woods gets $5 a wheel. That is reasonable in anybodys language or money. I also realize it don't help you much but felt the need to chime in. RIDE SAFE.

Regular tire shop (cars & trucks) here charges me $7.50.

[toetruck21]

Have a guy in Wahoo with an auto shop who will do it for $8.00!  You don't get any learning experience with that though!

[Valker]

Have a guy in Wahoo with an auto shop who will do it for $8.00!  You don't get any learning experience with that though!

Disagree...I learned that it was better to take it to that guy than do it myself! 

[Paxton]

Here in the City of Fallen Angels, the lowest I found was $105 for installing the tire...

My rider friends want to know where this place is... "what a deal!" they say. I keep getting requests for referrals to this shop.

Here, life is a beach... and then you die!

[Garland]

When I was able to get it done it cost me about $35 a wheel. I just did not like being dependent on someone else for that when I did everything else.

[old2soon]

Have a guy in Wahoo with an auto shop who will do it for $8.00!  You don't get any learning experience with that though!

Disagree...I learned that it was better to take it to that guy than do it myself! 

  Same here. Sides-stood right there and watched him change em out. And people still ask me why i live out in the sticks?? $105.00 To mount A tire-my rear tire delivered to my front dorr was $99.00. Just seems WAY high fer a tire change. I know we all gotta live some where-this just seems-whats the word i'm lookin fer-oh yeah=highway robbery. RIDE SAFE.

[csj]

I'd like to see lots 'o pictures of your effort on that new car tire.

Want to see how you went about gettin er done.

Though I'm already saving dough using a car tire, I could save
more not using my mechanics' services, he charges $75 / hr.

[Tropic traveler]

Well, I went from a car tire back to a motorcycle tire all but breaking of the bead done by hand in the garage. I found out that my big feet & being 250 lbs had some advantages! 



I did cheat a bit however.. I took the CT equipped wheel to work {Ford service dept} where one of my homies broke the bead with the tire machine.

We could have used the tire machine for dismount & mount but the Valk wheel had no flat surface for the 4 grippers to hold the wheel in place. I told him of my plan to use a 14" steel car rim & some 5/8" all thread to make a manual tire changer for bolting down to a sturdy table so I could dismount the tires by hand. He said why don't you make the car rim set up to bolt the Valk wheel down to then just bring the whole rig to him & use the tire machine to do the work...... Brilliant!!
Soooo, as soon as I find a suitable 14" wheel I'll make the rig up & take pics to post.
 

[YoungPUP]

I asked my local performance mc shop out of curiousity, and he said he'd mount it for free, so no one gets hurt mounting a tire, and for free so he's got plausible deniability if something goes wrong for using a car tire on a bike.

[Gryphon Rider]

So here are my old and new tires.  I wish I was given more than 30 seconds to burn off my old tire so I could have made sparks with the steel belts.  They are both 205/60HR16.  I know the new one looks way bigger, but it clears my drive shaft tube by the same amount as my Falken, so I'm not worried.


Here's my tire change platform, made of 2x4's, 3/4" plywood, a 14" car rim with dishwasher drain hose on the upper lip fastened with zip ties, and 39" or 40" of 5/8-UNC threaded rod.  I got the rim free from a Kijiji ad and the tire mounted on it was a son-of-a-mother for this amateur to get off with regular tire levers.  The rim clears the Valk's brake disk.


Here are my home-made tire tools.  I know, it's hard to tell they're home-made, they look so professional.  The horizontal board of the bead breaker is almost 6' long, for which I'm glad, because it took a lot of force to break the bead.  The hole for the vertical rod to go through is round at the top, but is a long slot at the bottom to allow it to pivot.  I reinfored the sides with plywood (glued and nailed) because the remaining wood on either side of the slot looked a little flimsy to me.  The dismounter copies the concept of the Mojo Lever (do a Google search if you like).  I had an old 1" bar from a barbell set that I've been moving from house to house over the last 20+ years, without ever having exercised with it past my teen years.  I cut it to 44" long, drilled and tapped the end (broke the handle from my tap & die set and had to finish with Vise-grips, what a pain), then constructed the end, described with the next photo.  Before making the mounter, I tried a combination of two methods I've seen on the web.  The first method is to lube up the tire, then slam the tire on the rim, getting the bottom bead on, then using tire levers to pry on the upper bead (see http://www.clarity.net/~adam/images/bike/tirechange/install-tire.mov).  The second method is to squish the beads together with webbing (see http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=299597).  So I tried holding the beads together with a couple of tie-down straps wrapped around the tire, then slamming the whole thing down on the rim.  Didn't work.  Then I tried just pushing the hog-tied tire onto the rim, then standing on the tire to force it over.  No such luck.  The straps were removed, then I decided I had to duplicate the other end of the Mojo lever, but without welding anything.  The mounter you see is my second attempt at making the business end.  The steel channel I made it from was a rejected piece from a former workplace, and is 12 Ga sheet metal.  My first attempt got the bottom bead on fine, and the top bead 3/4 of the way on, but there was too much friction between the tire and the lever to get the last section, even with lots of soapy water.  That was with me kneeling on the platform, hugging the tire to prevent it from spinning while my two kids pushed on the far end of the lever.  At first they would just spin me, the platform, and the wheel assembly on the garage floor until I braced the platform against the wall with a board.  The sharp edge of the bead was getting jammed in the end of my ill-designed lever.  The second design with the grey plastic worked with only one kid pushing while I hugged the tire.  And people say I don't show affection!  The grey plastic tubing leaning against the centre post gets put on the centre post when I use the mounting or dismounting levers, to protect the threads.


Lastly, I have a close-up of the lever ends.  The black bar has a 1/2-UNC x 4" socket screw, with a steel washer, a plastic disc, a 1/2" ID plastic tube (you see black paint scraped off the yellowish-white tube, I don't know why it's painted black, it's scrap from work), and a nut jammed against the bar, allowing the plastic bits to spin on the screw.  The dismounting lever is made from 1/4" black and 1/2" grey plastic scraps from work.  The grey stuff was already oval-shaped, and I bent the black plastic by heating it with a heat gun.

[X Ring]

Well, I went from a car tire back to a motorcycle tire all but breaking of the bead done by hand in the garage. I found out that my big feet & being 250 lbs had some advantages! 



I did cheat a bit however.. I took the CT equipped wheel to work {Ford service dept} where one of my homies broke the bead with the tire machine.

We could have used the tire machine for dismount & mount but the Valk wheel had no flat surface for the 4 grippers to hold the wheel in place. I told him of my plan to use a 14" steel car rim & some 5/8" all thread to make a manual tire changer for bolting down to a sturdy table so I could dismount the tires by hand. He said why don't you make the car rim set up to bolt the Valk wheel down to then just bring the whole rig to him & use the tire machine to do the work...... Brilliant!!
Soooo, as soon as I find a suitable 14" wheel I'll make the rig up & take pics to post.
 

That's really interesting.  I take my rear wheel to a local tire shop.  They've removed the bike tire and installed a car tire with their equipment.  No muss, no fuss. $7.50 out the door.  I did remove the wheel flange and brake rotor before taking it up there.  They set it on the machine brake rotor side up and the four clamps gripped the rim beautifully.

Marty

[Mildew]

I seen a youtube clip where this young kid just used 2 very small tire tools about the size of a screwdriver and swapt the tires in no time. Didn't even use a bead breaker..I changed mine once without a bead breaker but I stuck it in a vise after a few hours of aggravation

[old2soon]

Gryphon Rider-nice in house garage engineering. If it works fer ya keep at it. The general ultimax ya got there is what i have on my scoot. Ran up to chicago area and back(1930 miles on the round) and couldn't be happier with the tire. At this point in time running 36 p s i in rear and seems fine with two up or single. Metz 880 up front at 42 p s i. Twistys long runs on the interstate strong cross winds-i'm a D/S convert. RIDE SAFE.

[Ricky-D]

Gryphon Rider,

I wonder if you or anyone has tried that zip tie method to install the tire on the wheel.

There was a thread a year or so ago that reported how easily that made the job.

Haven't seen anything since and u-tube was a waste of time. (I couldn't find it)

Thanks

***

[Cliff]

Gryphon Rider,

I wonder if you or anyone has tried that zip tie method to install the tire on the wheel.

There was a thread a year or so ago that reported how easily that made the job.

Haven't seen anything since and u-tube was a waste of time. (I couldn't find it)

Thanks

***

I used the zip ties last year to mount the front and rear tires last year (both MC tires) worked extremely well and was easy.  I mounted a CT this year and started to use the zip ties but I was fighting it to get the tie pulled tight enough to get both tire beads to meet, gave up and mounted it without the zip ties.  If I had some extra hands to assist I may have got the zip ties to work,  but all done and said mounting the CT W/O the zip ties was easier than expected.

[Gryphon Rider]

Gryphon Rider,
I wonder if you or anyone has tried that zip tie method to install the tire on the wheel.
There was a thread a year or so ago that reported how easily that made the job.
Haven't seen anything since and u-tube was a waste of time. (I couldn't find it)
Thanks
***

I used the zip ties last year to mount the front and rear tires last year (both MC tires) worked extremely well and was easy.  I mounted a CT this year and started to use the zip ties but I was fighting it to get the tie pulled tight enough to get both tire beads to meet, gave up and mounted it without the zip ties.  If I had some extra hands to assist I may have got the zip ties to work,  but all done and said mounting the CT W/O the zip ties was easier than expected.

I can see how using zip ties at most 2" apart would have less friction than the tie-down straps that I used, but I think it would still be an heck of an effort to get the last third of the car tire onto the rim.  I used 6 or 8 Quick Grip style clamps (pictured) to draw the beads together before strapping them, and that should also work with zip ties, but I would first try using my hands and progressively tightening the zip ties.

[gordonv]

I take it that this was all done inside.

One item mentioned when trying to get a CT onto the rim, is to warm it up in the sun for an hour before trying to mount.

I bought 3x 24" tire irons from HF last year (available for loan locally), and did mount the CT onto my spare rim in about 1/2 hour. I did scrap the rim a little, but I was doing the job on my own and on a cold night. Next time I'll do it in the sun, and get some help to hold it, along with adding some plastic ends to the tire iron so it won't scrap the rim next time. I also didn't have to break a bead since there was no tire on it at the time.

Good work, and very creative.

I couldn't really understand how you used the mounting tool from the photo.

[Gryphon Rider]

I couldn't really understand how you used the mounting tool from the photo.

The video below shows the Mojo lever in action.  I modeled my levers after it, but of course this guy had it WAY easier with that flexible and skinny little motorcycle tire.  The concept is  the same.

Motorcycle Tire Change	powered by Aeva

[petevenne]

Spoked rim and no tube????