Gracious good morning! We have been knee deep in tires for the past couple months. Last year, I bought a manual tire changer from my local discount tool store. To be honest, it was not a good one. While it does get the job done, it has required seemingly endless additions and modifications to either complete tasks, or repair the device after light use.
The Tire Machine
I bought a cheap tire changer. We tried it while bolted to ply wood. It did not take long to realize this was bad, and we jumped directly to drilling holes and properly bolting this down. The method the tool used to secure the wheel was the big issue. It took 2 uses for the “Star” piece to fail. The next problem was the pry tool. The tool while usable, was not as secure and safe. We had a couple tires with glued on plastic covers. The Star piece was insufficient. We drilled holes in the plate and bolted the wheel on. There was also a pin on the plate to attempt to universalize the tool. It also failed after a few uses. The holes and bolts led to pin removal. The Bead breaker failed after a few uses. Yes, there is a pattern here. weak steal.
The fixes for the Tire machine
We did try to fix the bead breaker with no success. The cheap steal still failed. We had to buy a bead breaking tool. It is a better design, but still not enough to make this easy. We have successfully used the new tool 15 tires and it still works. The machine had a flat pry bar for peeling the old tire off. We found that the pry bar is a problem and many people have devised replacement solutions. We went with a duck bill. This tool promises to both peel off the old, and peel on the new tire. Peeling off has been smooth sailing, peeling back on, has not yet worked for us. Luckily we have been able to mount all of the tires with a good set of irons.
The Jobs
To date, we have replaced single tires filled with nails and screws. A full set on a Hyundai, a full set on a Honda H-RV, a Full set on a Prius, 2 tires on an Explorer, and 12 random tires for a friend who does racing and off road driving. The Honda was a big learning curve. We had a situation where the tire would not set on the bead due to the way it was stored at the warehouse. No matter what we did, we could not coax this rubber onto the wheel. It was exhausting and frustrating.