tire changer..

looking for some honest opinions here.

I always thought pneumatic/electric tire changers were $5-$6k. well the good commercial ones definitely are, and then some.

but then i ran across an inexpensive one. here's a local one I could get around $1000 OTD:

http://www.naautoequipment.com/tc400.html

looks like its the same chinese one rebranded lots of different "US" brands. some reviews:

http://www.r1-forum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=161126
http://www.ccsforum.com/index.php?topic=14514.0

I wouldn't buy this just for me tho. i'd buy it to make a few bucks on the side. figure $25 change/balance. $5 disposal, $5 i'll have the tire ordered to my place. rough numbers. it'd take me about 40 tires to recoup the costs then it'd be a pretty good little profit. if i did 2 tires a week i'd make my money back in less than 6 mos.

dealers around here charge $60-80 if you don't buy the tire thru them (per rim off the bike) or $40-$60 if you did. there is one shop who does it for $35 the rest are too far away or in that same price range as the dealers.

cons:
quality of product. although comes with 1 year warranty, then parts are available thru same company
knicking/damaging a wheel. maybe i wont advertise but just word of mouth and require a waiver or verbal agreement for those who i don't know? just a thought. one mark on a ducati rim could kill profits for years
liability -> if there was an accident etc. although the customer takes the liability of taking the rim off/on. some research shows it'd take a lot to show i was purposely negligent. take a pic of tire/rim before and after maybe as house keeping
people coming by the house -> word of mouth only would keep it to friends or friends of friends, but if i wanted to offer it to more people might not want rando's coming by the house

i dunno just something i'm kicking around, would be interested in thoughts.

I bought this machine about 3 years ago and am still using it. I have not had any problems with it so far. The only thing is on some skinny tires I have to put a 2x4 behind the wheel when breaking the bead. Mine has well over paid for itself.

did you buy it new? would my 8 gallon 125 psi compressor handle it?

seems theres tons of brand names for the same one eh?

how do you handle it if u nick a rim?

gamorg02 said:

did you buy it new? would my 8 gallon 125 psi compressor handle it?

seems theres tons of brand names for the same one eh?

how do you handle it if u nick a rim?

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Yes I bought it new. I think you would be pushing it with the size of your compressor the psi is fine but I dont think you have enough volume. I am sure there are tons of names for the same one this one is a prokar . You still have to be very careful not to knick a rim. I have been lucky so far & have not knicked any except for 1 on my bike. If you knick one I would assume you would have to pay for it unless you make people sign a clause.

CaptainKyle said:

Yes I bought it new. I think you would be pushing it with the size of your compressor the psi is fine but I dont think you have enough volume. I am sure there are tons of names for the same one this one is a prokar . You still have to be very careful not to knick a rim. I have been lucky so far & have not knicked any except for 1 on my bike. If you knick one I would assume you would have to pay for it unless you make people sign a clause.

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what size would you guess is needed for the compressor? i could easily pick something like this up

http://www.harborfreight.com/11-gallon-portable-air-tank-65595.html

to make it a 20 gallon almost.

Could always go with a no mar changer that doesn't take air, and won't scratch rims.

[email protected] said:

Could always go with a no mar changer that doesn't take air, and won't scratch rims.

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I thought about it but if I do anything ill probably do the pneumatic one, otherwise just continue to pay to have em done. I don't think, but could be wrong, id want to use the no mar one all the time as a side gig.

[email protected] said:

Could always go with a no mar changer that doesn't take air, and won't scratch rims.

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I have a No-Mar knock off...Wikco Induetries, or something like that and love it! Did a couple tires for the XJ the other day and the new /Metzer Marathons on Sallymax before I sold her....it worked just great. unk:

dannymax said:

I have a No-Mar knock off...Wikco Induetries, or something like that and love it! Did a couple tires for the XJ the other day and the new /Metzer Marathons on Sallymax before I sold her....it worked just great. unk:

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their cycle hill seems to be only a few bucks more than the wikco. with the trailer hitch and balancer i could do $835 ish shipped

vs $975 ish for the pneumatic...

hmm

I bought the last 2 off of Craigslist for 500 each and didnt do too much work to them. Coats is a really good brand and you can get them pretty easily. My experience with the Chinese knock offs is that the tables break easily and the fittings are poorly put together. I also have a Coats 220 hand opp style and a No Mar brand tire machine. All of them work great and we use them for several different types of tires and wheels. Just my opinion but I would stay clear of a 1000 dollar cheap machine if I were going to use it regularly.

a113ycat said:

I bought the last 2 off of Craigslist for 500 each and didnt do too much work to them. Coats is a really good brand and you can get them pretty easily. My experience with the Chinese knock offs is that the tables break easily and the fittings are poorly put together. I also have a Coats 220 hand opp style and a No Mar brand tire machine. All of them work great and we use them for several different types of tires and wheels. Just my opinion but I would stay clear of a 1000 dollar cheap machine if I were going to use it regularly.

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Would u call a couple - few tires a week regularly or like 10 a day regularly?

Think it looks the same as the one in a shop I worked at.
It worked fine, and he only had a pissy little compressor. The one I'm thinking of doesn't use air to rotate the bed, it uses an electric motor.
It was just a bit slow coz you had to wait for it to pump back up sometimes if it was a tight bead to break. You would probably want the extra air tank for only $35 bucks, but thats a double edged sword.

I hate stupid noisey f**ing compressors myself. :rofl_200:

Liability isn't likely to be a problem. You will definately know if you damage something! Most tyre places here get the boy to do tyres.

In the event of an accident there would need to be proof that you were negligent, and it takes a fair amount of damage to actually damage something. (Remember I'm in Oz, but the laws are pretty similar. Burden of proof etc)

The only thing you need to do is ensure the bead is fully seated. I guess photo's might be good for that.

gamorg02 said:

what size would you guess is needed for the compressor? i could easily pick something like this up

http://www.harborfreight.com/11-gallon-portable-air-tank-65595.html

to make it a 20 gallon almost.

Click to expand...

That would probably help out. I will look & see if I can find mu manual & see if it has the ratings. My compresor is 80 gallon so I did not really look at the rating when I got mine. I hesitated a little about it being cheap when I bought mine but I called & talked to them a while & bit the bullet. I would buy another one in a heartbeat. I had the manual changers before but just got to where I was doing to many tires so I went this route.

bazwell said:

Think it looks the same as the one in a shop I worked at.
It worked fine, and he only had a pissy little compressor. The one I'm thinking of doesn't use air to rotate the bed, it uses an electric motor.
It was just a bit slow coz you had to wait for it to pump back up sometimes if it was a tight bead to break. You would probably want the extra air tank for only $35 bucks, but thats a double edged sword.

I hate stupid noisey f**ing compressors myself. :rofl_200:

Liability isn't likely to be a problem. You will definately know if you damage something! Most tyre places here get the boy to do tyres.

In the event of an accident there would need to be proof that you were negligent, and it takes a fair amount of damage to actually damage something. (Remember I'm in Oz, but the laws are pretty similar. Burden of proof etc)

The only thing you need to do is ensure the bead is fully seated. I guess photo's might be good for that.

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U are right,
the compressor is used to break the bead and clamp the rim. Thanks for the info.

CaptainKyle said:

That would probably help out. I will look & see if I can find mu manual & see if it has the ratings. My compresor is 80 gallon so I did not really look at the rating when I got mine. I hesitated a little about it being cheap when I bought mine but I called & talked to them a while & bit the bullet. I would buy another one in a heartbeat. I had the manual changers before but just got to where I was doing to many tires so I went this route.

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How quick is the manual vs auto? A personal familiar with both I mean..

In my oppinion the auto is a lot quicker mainly breaking the beads is a big help with the air.

CaptainKyle said:

In my oppinion the auto is a lot quicker mainly breaking the beads is a big help with the air.

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I follow thanks

Just wanted to follow up on this. So i got the machine and it works incredibly well. There was a learning curve but once you get it down its 5 minutes for a tire change, as expected. The quality of the machine is pretty good and onpar if not a little better than what i expected (not comparing it to coats or something). Haven't had any quality issues with it. I had a piece welded but that was needed because I didnt' know what I was doing yet fully, anyways its a bit stronger now.

A question i have for you guys using these machine (or similar) is on the bead breaking. My bead 'shovel' hits the pad about halfway on it. So its got maybe 2-2.5" on either side of the pad. The issue here lies is if the rotors are within that 2-2.5" of the edge of the wheel they'll hit the pad once the bead is starting to break.

I can space the wheel off like maybe an 1" with a piece of wood but then the shovel doesn't have that 1" space between itself and the 'pad' and could potentially hit the other side of the rim.

anyways two ideas i had was to space the rubber pad off by however much is needed but then ensure the same amount of 'stuff' was under the stopper (red circle in picture). The other idea would be to make some sort of bracket to extend the shovel out another 1-3/4"~ if needed.

A third way would be to take out a circle shaped piece from the pad so the rotor had another 3/4" of space but then theres' nothing protecting it from the metal housing itself...

or maybe i'm missing another way to do this.

Thanks for any thoughts. (on a side note the pad is resting on the ground as i took it off so the height is off but where the shovel lands on it is right).

You guys are making me jealous! I bought one of the Harbor Freight manual jobbers, and it's effective, but it's not EASY! It's literally a two man job, and it's pretty cumbersome and time consuming, probably 15-30 minutes per tire, depending on how easy the new tires goes on. Still, at 100 bucks, I've probably done 50 tires over the past 5 years. At 50 bucks a tire, which is what they charge around here too, that's 2500 bucks I've saved on a hundred dollar machine. Of course, Dyna-beads aren't free either, but I just figure that in with the cost of the tire. Sure would be nice to have one of those machines, I bet if you put an ad on Craigslist and charged 30 bucks a pop, you'd have a line at your door!!!!

First let me throw in my vote for the No-Mar set up. Of course it is all manually operated but you can do every size wheel/tire out there and safely. Customer service was good. I saw them at Daytona and ended up buying one used. After I bought it, I realized just how few tires I change and ended up selling it only because I found a local shop that will pull a tire, put on the new one and do the bubble balance (not as good as electronically spin balanced) for ten measley bucks. How can I justify having a tire changer sitting around taking up space when I can get them done that cheap for carry in wheel/tire service.
I also ended up doing changes for people I knew for free cause I just couldn't bring myself to charge them. I don't drink so even if they got me a six pack, it would go to the old lady or visitors. If you think you want to dedicate a section of garage space for the thing, just be sure it is gonna be worth it.

texas-ss-tornado said:

You guys are making me jealous! I bought one of the Harbor Freight manual jobbers, and it's effective, but it's not EASY! It's literally a two man job, and it's pretty cumbersome and time consuming, probably 15-30 minutes per tire, depending on how easy the new tires goes on. Still, at 100 bucks, I've probably done 50 tires over the past 5 years. At 50 bucks a tire, which is what they charge around here too, that's 2500 bucks I've saved on a hundred dollar machine. Of course, Dyna-beads aren't free either, but I just figure that in with the cost of the tire. Sure would be nice to have one of those machines, I bet if you put an ad on Craigslist and charged 30 bucks a pop, you'd have a line at your door!!!!

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thats the plan once i get this little hiccup worked out. few spots in a 50 mi radius do 'em for $25 so i'll probably be in that range (otherwise shops want between $50-$80 off the bike). i have a few friends who race and/or who buy/sell bikes so even giving them considerable discounts i'm starting to make a good portion of my $$ back.