Fitting Your Own Tyres

[Wendelspanswick]

Looking round for some winter tyres for the van and I've seen some I like for around £50 a pop. I haven't changed a car tyre before, done a few motorcycle ones and plenty of wheelbarrow ones!
Is it worth the saving doing it yourself?

 

[optima21]

depends on how much you value your time, some people will say its a 5 minute job to do, but it'll take me a couple of hours to change a set of 4. Will you need them balancing afterwards. I statically balance mine and they seem to work fine for me. What equipment do you have to change the tyre with.

if you look at videos of changing tyres on youtube, they look to be much easier than the ones I've changed.

 

[Kayos]

£5 per tyre including balancing and disposal if needed

I'd rather pay

 

[wristpin]

Have you considered that winter tyres are often a "taller" profile than summer rubber and are fitted on smaller wheels to maintain the same rolling radius and speedometer reading etc?

 

[brightspark]

I have my own tyre machine I made but only use it for trailer tires or punctures. new tires I just pay and get them balanced

 

[pedrobedro]

Have you considered that winter tyres are often a "taller" profile than summer rubber and are fitted on smaller wheels to maintain the same rolling radius and speedometer reading etc?

Winter tyres are available in the same sizes as your original tyres.

 

[lexi]

Honestly mate, less it is an emergency or out of hours thing, it is hardly worth it. I set up a bead breaker and got mahoosive levers et all.
It has only been worth it for an odd trailer tyre. When you see how effortless it is by guys with proper gear.
This is assuming you can get tyres changed at decent money. I pay £7 a wheel for balance and changing, he only takes the same for a puncture.

 

[brightspark]

Honestly mate, less it is an emergency or out of hours thing, it is hardly worth it. I set up a bead breaker and got mahoosive levers et all.
It has only been worth it for an odd trailer tyre. When you see how effortless it is by guys with proper gear.
This is assuming you can get tyres changed at decent money. I pay £7 a wheel for balance and changing, he only takes the same for a puncture.

the greedy gits charge 15 quid a puncture round our way . no chance

 

[Mee]

I just stick mine in four wheel drive and leave it.

 

[Crater Creator]

£5 per tyre including balancing and disposal if needed

I'd rather pay

For a fiver I'd rather pay as well - but it's more like 20 quid a wheel where I am, sometimes more. I've seriously considered a wheel changer and balancer, it would probably pay for itself in a few years with the whole family getting use of it (but obviously I'd have to do all the heavy lifting)......
One thing I wouldn't try changing is runflats - they're a right pain even for the pros.

 

[daleyd]

I just stick mine in four wheel drive and leave it.

Not overly helpful when he has a van...

 

[Wendelspanswick]

The van has 195/65r16s on at the moment, during the week I do a fair bit of mileage on A and B roads (about 15000 a year) but at the weekends I use the van to get up to the field where I'm building a barn so about a mile up a stoney track through a wood and across a grass meadow, it's OK in the summer but tough in the winter. I have a set of snow chains if it all goes pear-shaped but I'm after something better than the standard van tyres.
I can get these 215/65r16 Insa tyres for £50 a pop delivered:

But I know if I try and buy anything similar locally they will be closer to £90 a piece and round here they charge £20 each for fitting and disposal.

And before anyone suggests swapping the van for a 4wd or a 4wd van it's a no go.

 

[123hotchef]

id pay someone to do them mate then they will balance them too I think I paid 10-15 per tyre back in August that included valves balancing and disposal £20 seems steep

 

[Wendelspanswick]

id pay someone to do them mate then they will balance them too I think I paid 10-15 per tyre back in August that included valves balancing and disposal £20 seems steep

They all seem to do free puncture repairs round here but fitting tyres they haven't supplied is steep.

 

[123hotchef]

go to a smaller independent tyre fitter it will be cheaper I think mobile fitters only charge £15 a corner and they come to you

 

[armalites]

I've got my own changer, mine has more than paid for itself and it's still easily worth what I paid for it so I'm quids in. The one thing to bare in mind if you have vehicles with big posh alloys then you do need to get a decent changer as buying an old nail of a changer won't do you any favours. The consumables(shoe/head inserts etc) and parts can be hard to get hold of. My first changer came out of a small garage so hadn't been used all day long. It did still need a repair and conversion to 1ph. It ended up owing me probably £225, I changed dozens of tyres with that machine right to 2-3 sets of 900-16 which are massive. Amazingly 5 years later when my needs changed it sold for almost £500 on ebay! I had already bought a bigger/better semi auto Corghi out of a Vauxhall dealer that was closing down. I bought my balancer with an intermittant fault which was a risk as it's a Snap On/John Bean and the parts are stupid money. An evening of tinkering and all was well.

The biggest issue is having the space for something you may not use for months and getting them home as you can guarantee all the sensible priced/decent ones will be miles away.

My costings didn't factor in that they took quite a few hours with a trailer on to collect and if I factored in my time and diesel then I could have spent £150 more if there had been one locally but I like an adventure and man maths says time and fuel don't count

With regard to run flats I have a couple of these on my changer, makes life easier with low profiles and run flats
http://www.balanceweights.co.uk/category-s/74.htm

They are a great toy to have especially if you have multiple vehicle or are into motorsport, there are also things you can do things that tyre bays won't/don't have time to do. A couple of examples.

Cleaning the rims up, there is often a lot of debris left on the rims, most places will juts put the new tyre on.

Balancing, things like big old 4x4 wheel/tyres can be a mare to balance and you will often see Landrovers with 3-4 big weights in a row. If you have your own fit you can rotate the tyre on the rim and often half the weights by positioning differently. My balancer has a hidden weight program and I'm not just talking about stick on weights, if you have a spoked alloy and the weights sit between the spokes you can get the machine to split it and position behind the spokes so they can't be seen. I am yet to see a tyre bay do that yet it takes maybe 1-2mins longer.

Even with a machine there are some tricks/skills you learn but I really like changing tyres, would I want to do it full time? No chance

 

[123hotchef]

 

[8ob]

My money would go on a spare set of rims and have the winter tyres fitted and balanced, at least then you can swap between them when conditions change.

Bob

 

[Cobbler]

the greedy gits charge 15 quid a puncture round our way . no chance

Last puncture I had done was £20 by the time vat was on. I thought that was scandalous

 

[Hitch]

Our local tyre man will send you on your way if you turn up wanting tyres fitted that you've bought else where.