Advice requested from those of you who have mounted tires & balanced wheels at home

[foo]

The stronger wedge plus the 90 degree angle allowed me to apply enough force to finally pop the inside-rim bead of the admittedly strong 108T tire sidewall.

 

[foo]

Only after I popped the underside tire bead did I try to remove the lever arm, where I found that it bent at about a 10 or 15 degree angle. It took that much force, but you have to also realize that this harbor freight metal is soft as rubber.

 

[foo]

After straightening the bent tire iron as much as I could, and after moving the clovis pin to the center hole to get more of an angle, and using a tire iron to keep a depressed bead down, I easily popped the upper bead.

 

[foo]

Placing the tire iron flat step with the step side up, allowed me to start spinning the top bead off the wheel rim without lubrication:

 

[foo]

Adding dish detergent helped a lot to spin the top bead off, where I'd say it's a requirement to have lubrication but everything gets slippery, even the tools, so try to keep it off the tools.

 

[foo]

You repeat the process for the lower bead, with the tire iron again going in step-side up as in the first bead.

 

[foo]

Once the tire was off the rim, I cut off the old 1-1/4 inch tire valve from the underside with a utility knife, where the old valve was in surprisingly good shape, so I might have kept it had I not wanted to test out the 4-way valve-seating tool.

 

[foo]

After lubricating the new 1-1/2 inch valve with dish soap, I threaded on the 4-way tool and pulled it through so easily that it was shockingly simple.

Later you'll see I have a much better idea for a 4-way tool that I already have in my compressor toolbox, so I never needed the 4-way tool in the first place, but I didn't realize that until later.

 

[foo]

Only later, when I was filling the tire with air, did I realize that a handy tool for pulling the valve would have been my compressor football/soccer-ball needle-valve tool, with the needle valve removed, which spins onto the valve threads with ease and which has a nice trigger handle to grab onto so that the valve can be pulled into place.

But I didn't think of this at the time I was seating the first valve, so, it's just a lesson learned for the future, and for someone else who happens to read this for hints on how to do the job without that silly 4-way valve seating tool (which is never needed).

 

[foo]

The bottom bead of the new tire went on 3/4 of the way by hand, and then with a two-foot tire iron, the last quarter went on relatively easily.

 

[foo]

It's important to remember to flip the tool and set the hook side appropriately because you're not going to seat the top bead unless you have the tool oriented this way exactly.

 

[foo]

You'll want to ensure you seat the bead at the tire-valve first because that last quarter gets dicey where you have to use the most strength in the whole job, and where a slippery bar gets obnoxious.

I had to vise grip the end of the bar that I was holding because it kept twisting off the bead but with vise grips, it was manageable.

At the very least, you'll want to use vise grips to hold the slippery upper bead from slipping off as you try to force the last 1/4 of the upper bead onto the rim.

 

[foo]

This is the point where you're extremely glad the tool is firmly bolted to cement, as the force is as much as you can give it.

Even so, I found I had to ditch the slippery but huge red pry bar and resort to two 24-inch tire irons to leverage the remaining upper bead over onto the wheel rim.

 

[foo]

It's at this point, before you fill the tire with air, that you line up the red dot to the match-mounting marks, or, the yellow dot to the valve stem (if there is no red dot) or if there is a red dot but no match mounting marks, then you line up the red dot to the valve stem.

After doing that, I first removed the inner valve stem of the Schrader valve and tried to use my latching air chuck, but without the valve stem, the darn chuck wouldn't pass any air.

 

[foo]

It was dark and drizzly when I just decided to put the valve stem back in and put the latching chuck back on (although later I found a neat trick that I will try with the next tire).

It turns out that having the valve stem in or out really made no difference whatsoever, it seems, with respect to getting the air inside and getting the bead to seat.

The trick to seating the bead is really to have two hands free to hold the tire edges and jiggle, wiggle, coerce, tug and jerk the tire as it's loose when you're trying to get the bead to seat.

Once you get the tire in a certain position, you can just feel it starting to blow up, where it seats and finally pops a few times as you work up the pressure to 40, 50, and 60 psi.

 

[foo]

Further proof that the silly 4-way tool is worthless is the fact that it doesn't have a pin for letting the air out of the valve to drop the pressure down from 60 psi back to 40 where it belongs.

Rummaging around in my compressor kit, I found this needle-valve which is normally used to inflate footballs and soccer balls, but which deflates the tire without sharp points like those that are on the silly and useless 4-way tool.

 

[foo]

It was at this point that I realized that the football/soccerball inflator handle can be used for the next tire to inflate the tire quickly without the schrader valve being in place, so I will try it this way on the next tire to see if it works.

(It may require a third hand to press the trigger, but I can probably wire the trigger pressed because both hands will be needed to coerce the tire into momentarily seating while the air is filling it up.)

 

[foo]

At this point it's time to make two checks of the valve stem.

1. Ensure the red (radial runout) dot is at the valve stem
2. Ensure with a straight edge that the valve doesn't stick out past the rim

Since it was dark, I didn't bother looking for match mounting marks on the old rim, so, I simply lined up the red dot with the tire valve since the red dot indicates the tire's high point for radial runout and radial force variation, which takes precedence over the yellow dot which indicates the tire's light spot which would have been paired with the valve stem on the wheel which is the wheel's heavy spot had the red dot not existed.

 

[foo]

I left the tire outside, at 42psi, where I will check it in the morning before starting to balance it.

One question is what tool you use to remove the old clip on wheel weights?

 

[foo]

We use these at work...

https://www.amazon.com/Specialty-Products-Company-37000-Weight/dp/B000SIALVW

Thanks for that advice on the wheel weight pliers that the pros use.

But a hammer and a small/sharpish punch will work fine, just tap it under the edge of the clip and pry the weight off.

Thanks for that advice that a hammer and pick of some sort will work fine.

Since I'm not going to be doing this often, that makes sense not to have to store yet another single-purpose tool in my already very crowded toolbox.