Harbor Freight Tire Changer Upgrades

[brokencase]

What do you think about the following "rough concept"?

tirechangemod2.jpg (55.34 KiB) Viewed 24780 times

[Ed Lijewski]

I changed many tires using tire irons. If/when protecting rim edges was a concern I cut two side sections of a milk jug and placed those between the rim and two tire irons, moving those along as the tire inner edge rose above the rim.

Milk container plastic is very durable and fully protected the wheel rim in doing this.

Benefits are financial: no expense (unless you need to buy tire irons); and physical exercise. A win/win.

YMMV

[DPDISXR4Ti]

Brad, I was looking at that swing arm upgrade you posted earlier.
https://roundabouttools.com/ols/products
Nice, but it cost four times the price of the changer! That severely eats into the amortization payback on DIY tire changing!

You think that one is expensive? Take a look at this one!
https://lucidautowerks.com/collections/ ... re-changer

[DPDISXR4Ti]

What do you think about the following "rough concept"?
tirechangemod2.jpg

Lots of different approaches for sure. There is a DIY design (which I think is sold in kit form) where they do something similar to this ^^^. The pry bar gets anchored on the center post though.

[brokencase]

You think that one is expensive? Take a look at this one!
https://lucidautowerks.com/collections/ ... re-changer

Crazy. Look at all the welding and steel that goes into the tire changer itself - and that only cost about $50.
If I really want one of these upgrades I'll weld it up myself.

A while ago a neighbor was throwing away a full exercise set. It was all made out of various sizes of box section steel.
It was all disassembled. I took the truck over and grabbed it all and then spent a hour cutting up the pieces into pristine sections with a 4" cutting disc and then reclaimed all the nuts and bolts. At the time I was thinking that it was worth the effort for just the nuts and bolts! But I did end up using some of the box section for another project.

I'll have to scrounge around for a large piece of tubing for the vertical section, but I think I have the rest covered.

Problem is that for me this is a low priority project.

[DPDISXR4Ti]

Problem is that for me this is a low priority project.

I was in the same boat and realized I'd just never get to it if I was going to build it. So I just bit the bullet and opened my wallet. And I still haven't fully gotten to it. So far I only got as far as breaking the bead of one tire.

[brokencase]

I've gotten a lot of use out of it. I've had a few cheap inner tubes from Moss Motors fail so I had to revisit the Bugeye wheels a couple of times. Did the Sport Trac tires twice, then the Scorpio, then my neighbor's VW Bug.

It's held up well. I didn't do any welding re-enforcement.

I will probably 3d print that polyurethane cover kit that I posted the link to earlier.

[DPDISXR4Ti]

It's been a busy year but I wanted to actually remove some tires with this thing before year-end. And so today I removed a couple junk 14" tires from some "phone dial" wheels. I found this video one of the more helpful ones...

https://youtu.be/DrKbuE74iqU?si=lkSvWEtjrOs9g47z

A couple things I learned...
1) Either mount this thing to the floor (as Dean has suggested), or mount it to some thick plywood or a pallet. I mounted it to a scrap ~40" x 28" piece of 3/4" plywood I had around with 4 carriage bolts. Doing so, I'm able to stand on the plywood while applying leverage without the changer wanting to spin away. No doubt though, mounting it to the floor is the better option. Down the road I plan to drill four holes in the garage floor and pound some 1/2" anchors in.
2) A short chunk of retired fire hose nicely slides over the end below the bead breaker to prevent the wheel from getting marred when breaking the beads.

[DPDISXR4Ti]

Got a couple 14" tires removed yesterday as well as a 17". I tried to go ahead and mount a new 17" tire and was not successful. The bottom half of the tire was no trouble, but I was only able to get the outer side on about 75% of the way before I couldn't spin the duckhead assembly any further, even with a longer pipe. I was only using soapy water as my lube, so maybe that's the problem. I needed to get some real tire lube any way, so I'll get that and report back.

In the mean time, moving ahead and looking into using my static balancer, here's a video about that. I chose this one as it also talks about modifying the balancer by opening up the guide hole for the pivot pin. He talks about using multiple bits to do that, but you can do it in just one step with a 3/8" drill bit. You're just creating clearance so the size isn't super precise.
https://youtu.be/J7TTeGO9nWY?si=SOqitKCg1EoU2TKh

[DPDISXR4Ti]

I did some reading and found that vegetable oil works as well as any commercial tire lube. Long story short, very little change. The duck-head glides around easily until the effort goes up pretty quickly and comes to a halt. Using a longer leverage bar only gets me a little further. I feel like I'd start breaking things if I tried with an even longer bar. Tire size is 235/45 x 17. I knew low-profile tires would be more of a challenge, but I didn't think they would be impossible.

DuckHead17Fail.jpg (417.88 KiB) Viewed 22767 times

Just discovered (and joined) this Facebook group with 4300 members.... https://www.facebook.com/groups/295651657653649
Perhaps someone will have some insight.

[andyofcolumbusmerkur]

I've had small tires that would go on pretty easy and some that just would not go on no matter what I did. I would let the tires sit out in the hot sun, use a bunch of "profession use only" tire mounting lube, buff the rim real smooth, try flipping the rim or the tire, nothing worked. I would use a cheater bar and force it only to damage the tire. Seems like the tire was made a little different, wasn't real exact or possibly was a second. One time when replacing a tube on an old walk behind mower I had to use vise grips. That worked but damaged the rim a little. Sometimes the tire bead on the opposite end rides up too high, instead of staying deeper in the rim and makes things way too tight. So if you can use your knees to keep that side down while pulling the bar around it can help. Just try not to give yourself a damn hernia fighting with some stupid tire.

[brokencase]

Brad, I had no trouble putting big knobby retreads on the Sport Trac's 16" aluminum rims.

Have you tried using the stock bar and not the duckbill? I use tire lube from NAPA, and I removed the red paint from, and polished, the paw on the stock bar. This greatly reduced the risk of marring the wheels. I had no damage to the rims edges when I did the Sport Trac and Scorpio tires.

It was a bit of work polishing the paw. I think I used paint remover and wire brush to get all the paint off. Then I filed all rough edges and burs off.
Finally about 20 minutes on a powerful six inch buffing wheel.

But I must admit I have not played around with any low profile wheel/tires yet.

[Ed Lijewski]

Real men change(d) tires just using tire irons.

YMMVZ

[DPDISXR4Ti]

Sometimes the tire bead on the opposite end rides up too high, instead of staying deeper in the rim and makes things way too tight. So if you can use your knees to keep that side down while pulling the bar around it can help.

I actually thought about that ^^^ but wondered if it might work to my benefit in the reverse manner, given that the bottom side was all the way down at the bottom - it almost looked like it was in final position (it wasn't).

I'm going to try another tire just in case there's something weird going on with this one.

[DPDISXR4Ti]

Have you tried using the stock bar and not the duckbill? I use tire lube from NAPA, and I removed the red paint from, and polished, the paw on the stock bar. This greatly reduced the risk of marring the wheels. I had no damage to the rims edges when I did the Sport Trac and Scorpio tires.

I recall your previous suggestion of using the stock bar, but didn't want to go down that path just yet (especially given that I haven't done anything to it at this point). I get that the tire doesn't need to be stretched quite as much that way, but I'd first want to experiment on a wheel I don't care about.

I'm confident that the vegetable oil lube is every bit as effective as the commercial tire lube. It works much better than the diluted dish soap I initially tried. That works good enough for removal, but not for install.