Mounting your own tires?

In article >,
(Doc) wrote:

> > wrote in message >...
>
> >
> > For those of us who grew up in rural areas, mounting and dismounting tires
> > is not exactly rocket science. You can break the bead with the car's own
> > jack, dismount and mount the tire with simple tire irons, seat the bead with
> > air pressure, and balance it with a bubble balancer. No big deal, really.
>
> Can you outline how you break the bead with the jack?

Pull the valve core out, and set the tire/wheel assembly on a hard
surface under the car or other *VERY* heavy item. Car is usually
handiest and heaviest. Set the jack base on tire (not on wheel!) near
bead, under something solid on car. Operate jack until bead breaks. If
needed, rotate tire/wheel, reposition jack, and repeat until bead is
broken around entire rim. Even a "tough" tire usually only takes 2-3
times of pumping up the jack to get one side ccompletely broken loose.
Often, once gets things started well enough to easily finish by hand or
with a tire iron or large screwdriver.

Variation (but only if you've got good solid steel frame doors that can
take this sort of thing):
Tire against one side of building doorway, jack placed horizontally
(don't try this with a hydraulic jack that isn't designed for horizontal
use) against tire and other side of doorway. Proceed as above.

Basically, you've just turned your car/jack or doorway/jack into a crude
press, rated at about the lower of either the jack's rated capacity (if
you use the doorframe method, the frame's "crushability" will come into
play, too, but...) or half the weight of your car or whatever object you
used to pin the jack down.

Didn't realize you bought a shop tool at the same time you bought the
car, didja?

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