Tires: Mounting

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RACING >> GARAGE >> TIRES >> Mounting

How to Mount Tires
My local Santa Barabara tire shop charges me about $30 to swap a set of tires which ain't the most I've ever paid but, it certainly is nowhere near the best. $30 a pop adds up pretty quick when you race supermoto, flat tracking and motocross and have to change the tires regularly. Plus, not being able to do it myself limited some of my options if I wanted to compete in a few events with different clubs on the same weekend unless I could run the same tires for all of them. Long story short: it was time to learn how to change my own tires.

Obviously, you can do dirt bike tires with hand tools and it's a rich and proud tradition but, it's ALOT harder to do with tubeless tires so, I'm all about using a machine to help you out. To that end, here is a list of some tire changing products / machines:

nomartirechanger.com Static wheel balancer $99
marcparnes.com - Portable wheel balancer $105
harborfreight.com - Portable tire changer (#34542-8VGA/$50) plus motorcycle attachment (#42927-6VGA/$50)
wikco.com - MC110.100 Motorcycle Tire Changer $400
nomartirechanger.com No-Mar Motorcycle Tire Changer $595
wikco.com - Coats Model 220 Manual Tire Changer $860
klsupply.com - Automatic tire changer $$$ - If you have to ask...

I used to have a link to an article on 4strokes.com here but, they got upset about me linking to an article on their website and sent a legal notice about it. I'm not sure why they had to lawyer up instead of sending me an email or why they acted like dicks (IMHO) but, what the hell. I took it down because I don't care that much and they aren't that interesting anyway. If this kind of behavior annoys you then please feel free to tell 'em about it.

I've heard that the Harbor Freight Motorcycle Tire Changer works best with dirt bike tires as the rim grips may be narrow for many modern sportbike rims. Also the lever, in particular, is typical Harbor Freight quality and is best replaced as soon as possible. The MojoLever ($80) is a popular replacement for the HP lever. [More]

Here's some additonal tutorials:

clarity.net - Adam Glass' in-depth radial tire changing instructions
sportrider.com - Hands On: Tire Mounting and Balancing

Here's some video's

The next step would be to balance your tires, particularly for street use and one of these days I'll create a nice page on how to do that (it's easy). Grab a static balancer and some wheel weights and you'll probably be able to figure out the rest on your own. Here's a buyer's guide for balancers and some information on balancing tires is linked to below.

Wheel Balancing >>

January 26, 2009