Gillbot
Lifer
First off, no pics. Sorry....
With that said, I was just sitting here being a bit bored, googling trying to find a tire shop open on Sunday to get my Jeep tires mounted and balanced. After reading this thread and letting my boredom get the best of me I thought, well I better at least go clean out my truck and get the tires and wheels loaded up for tomorrow and get them done. Now typically people around here want to charge between $40 and $100 for a simple mount and balance on four tires. They charge more if they have to remove them from the vehicle and even more if they have to remove a tire from the wheel and replace it with another. Lucky for me, my wheels are bare and the tires are fresh off a Jeep Rubicon with maybe 50 miles on it so all I need to do is combine the two!
I go out to the garage, grab a wheel and it hit me. I remember as a kid helping my friends dad "walk on" a HUGE tractor tire. This thing was like 6 foot in diameter so he had me stand in one spot while he walked his way around the tire until it popped on the wheel. With the wheel still in my hand I decided what the hell, I'll try and mount one just to see if I can. I set the wheel down face up on a old piece of plywood, put in a new valve stem and soaped up the bead area of the tire. Now, as long as you get the tire into the mounting grove as seen in the center of this wheel it should go right on.
You typically don't need tools, well at least with decent sized tires that have enough sidewall. So sure enough, the bottom bead went on easy as pie and the top bead nearly as easy as long as you make sure you get the bead into that grove on the wheel. Just work the bead around the wheel pressing down till the tire pops on. Hit them with air until the bead pops, then fill to the proper pressure.
I went ahead and mounted all four, aired them up and tossed them into the back of the truck. Now I'm half tempted to buy the Harbor Freight bubble balancer just to try my luck there too! I've neveer had tires just balanced before so I'm hoping I can find a shop that will do that for like $10 or so since they won't have to do much of anything except put them on the machine and stick on a bit of weight. If it weren't for the cost of the balancer and weights, I'd probably just do that myself too. I just don't expect to get enough use out of the balancer and weights to justify the cost against the maybe $10-20 I hope to pay for a simple balance.
With that said, I was just sitting here being a bit bored, googling trying to find a tire shop open on Sunday to get my Jeep tires mounted and balanced. After reading this thread and letting my boredom get the best of me I thought, well I better at least go clean out my truck and get the tires and wheels loaded up for tomorrow and get them done. Now typically people around here want to charge between $40 and $100 for a simple mount and balance on four tires. They charge more if they have to remove them from the vehicle and even more if they have to remove a tire from the wheel and replace it with another. Lucky for me, my wheels are bare and the tires are fresh off a Jeep Rubicon with maybe 50 miles on it so all I need to do is combine the two!
I go out to the garage, grab a wheel and it hit me. I remember as a kid helping my friends dad "walk on" a HUGE tractor tire. This thing was like 6 foot in diameter so he had me stand in one spot while he walked his way around the tire until it popped on the wheel. With the wheel still in my hand I decided what the hell, I'll try and mount one just to see if I can. I set the wheel down face up on a old piece of plywood, put in a new valve stem and soaped up the bead area of the tire. Now, as long as you get the tire into the mounting grove as seen in the center of this wheel it should go right on.
You typically don't need tools, well at least with decent sized tires that have enough sidewall. So sure enough, the bottom bead went on easy as pie and the top bead nearly as easy as long as you make sure you get the bead into that grove on the wheel. Just work the bead around the wheel pressing down till the tire pops on. Hit them with air until the bead pops, then fill to the proper pressure.
I went ahead and mounted all four, aired them up and tossed them into the back of the truck. Now I'm half tempted to buy the Harbor Freight bubble balancer just to try my luck there too! I've neveer had tires just balanced before so I'm hoping I can find a shop that will do that for like $10 or so since they won't have to do much of anything except put them on the machine and stick on a bit of weight. If it weren't for the cost of the balancer and weights, I'd probably just do that myself too. I just don't expect to get enough use out of the balancer and weights to justify the cost against the maybe $10-20 I hope to pay for a simple balance.
