Fitting and balancing your own tyres

[the snooper]

A couple of quid per rim? Really?

I can get 30kg of assorted stick on wheel weights for under £90 - so let's pull a figure out my posterior and say an 'average' wheel needs what, 30g to balance it? That's 9p for weights.

Valves, I can get a box of 100 for under £15, so 15p per wheel (assuming 'standard' rubber stem no frills jobbies).

Everywhere around here charges ~£15 per wheel to fit a customer supplied tyre. With the machines, I can remove, replace, inflate and balance within 5 minutes (I know I can, I did it for a living) - so let's be generous and say it's a trainee who's going to take 10... That'll be £90 per hour please - well ok, £89.76 per hour plus parts. If it's someone with a bit of experience, then it'll be £179.76/hr+parts.

If you went to a garage and they quoted you £89.76 (or £179.76) per hour labour plus parts, would you say "ooh yes please!"? I mean, they have the same or higher overheads than a tyre bay does (they probably have higher staff costs etc.) so why is it deemed fair for tyre fitters to charge so much more?

simple, greed and the fact they know they can do it because 99.99999 % of people don't have a tyre machine and don't have a clue how to go about it

 

[the snooper]

A lot of places won't fit customer supplied tyres anymore (insurance issues, moaners who think its the bays fault even if the tyres they supply are junk, liability if there's any doubt if and when something goes wrong...)

Charges aren't cheap but I guess neither is the machinery, the liability insurance, premises insurance and prob a few other things.....

I don't agree with the insurance excuse, they simply want to sell their own tyre which is what they are there for I know, they can examine tyres and refuse if damaged and also have a disclaimer when fitting customers own tyres

 

[brightspark]

Use the blade on mini digger to break the bead.

ok if u h

I don't agree with the insurance excuse, they simply want to sell their own tyre which is what they are there for I know, they can examine tyres and refuse if damaged and also have a disclaimer when fitting customers own tyres

also they dont want to fit innertubes if theres a puncture cos theres no profit in it crafy b.....s

 

[the snooper]

ok if u h
also they dont want to fit innertubes if theres a puncture cos theres no profit in it crafy b.....s

yeah some even state its illegal now which is a load of rubbish

 

[the snooper]

No, the insurance isn't an excuse.

as far as tyre fitters go I think it is, most places will fit a customers own tyres and most of those willing and the odd few unwilling will share the same insurance companies. also the first companies to close would be those selling and fitting used tyres

 

[brightspark]

99 percent of tire fitting companys do not carry inner tubes they would rather sell u a new tire if theres a puncture slightly off the tread and use that as the excuse not to fit

 

[J.B. Welding]

A couple of quid per rim? Really?

I can get 30kg of assorted stick on wheel weights for under £90 - so let's pull a figure out my posterior and say an 'average' wheel needs what, 30g to balance it? That's 9p for weights.

Valves, I can get a box of 100 for under £15, so 15p per wheel (assuming 'standard' rubber stem no frills jobbies).

Everywhere around here charges ~£15 per wheel to fit a customer supplied tyre. With the machines, I can remove, replace, inflate and balance within 5 minutes (I know I can, I did it for a living) - so let's be generous and say it's a trainee who's going to take 10... That'll be £90 per hour please - well ok, £89.76 per hour plus parts. If it's someone with a bit of experience, then it'll be £179.76/hr+parts.

If you went to a garage and they quoted you £89.76 (or £179.76) per hour labour plus parts, would you say "ooh yes please!"? I mean, they have the same or higher overheads than a tyre bay does (they probably have higher staff costs etc.) so why is it deemed fair for tyre fitters to charge so much more?

Ok, so the parts involved are under a quid per wheel-my attempt to justify a tenner a rim is thwarted! It's a tenner for me at a small local garage and I don't mind paying that. By the time the guy has stopped what he is doing, had a chat, changed the tyre and balanced, listened to me moan about the cost of tyre changing and written a reciept for the tenner its a good 15 minutes and sometimes more.
In a tyre shop where all the staff seem to be under 18 and its a cold loveless transaction charging 10+ pounds is a p!sstake i agree.
Again it's a matter of what the market will stand. If someone comes to me and asks me to tack weld 'thingy' for them the time spent welding might be a few seconds. Depending who it is I might say "don't worry about it" or I might charge, say, £5. Now £5 per 3 seconds must add up to a decent wage but I think in general a customer would consider that a fair minimum fee for the service provided. Obviously the rate for tyre changing has gone up over the years "I remember when you could get a full set of Bridgestones for £3 and still have change for a full tank of petrol" etc. but I guess you just gotta take it or buy the gear yourself, which will ammount to a good few tenners worth if you want to do the job properly. Nothing worse than cruising up a motorway with the steering wheel rattling about like a washing machine on spin cycle!

 

[MrFluffy]

What jb said, 5 mins to change the tyre, 5 minutes to discuss with customer + take money, check the carcass visibly + inflate in a cage if its a bigger one and you have 10+ minutes easy. And while that tyres being fitted, more profitable activities are not being done (ie sale of tyres, tracking, brakes + value add). There's a business overhead to cover including the time of that fitter, if they are not flat out doing tyres the whole shift, there's lost profit in those times and it has to be covered somehow. Business rates, electricity, upkeep of the machines, taxes, some profit for sustainability, business overhead, the coffee jar etc etc etc. Break even point on having that bod there to do a tyre change is probably surprisingly high when you factor all that lot in.

Lets phrase it another way If you went the garage and had them change a light lens that took 5 minutes to do, would there be a outcry if they charged you 15 quid, or would you be expecting to get invoiced for a minimum of 1/2 hr or a hour? Yes a small independant would do it for customer relations, but I know people that have paid half a hour min service charge to have a light bulb changed in a dealership.

Normally we supply IT consultantcy to bluechip companies but I have some smaller customers just so all my eggs aren't in one basket and occasionally I get involved with pc repair & charge a minimum unit of half an hour to install a anti virus, and run it and kill off whatever nasties its come out with if the tool can do it without extra work. If it finds nothing and theyre a good customer and its a freeware version & I haven't had to go collect it etc often I just wave them away at invoice time because it actually costs me more to issue a invoice + process it etc than a smaller amount of labor would generate in profit. If someone indicated the choice was between charging 1/4 hr or not getting the job because extrapolated out that made my rate extremely expensive. Well, I'd miss them as a customer...

 

[lazybones51]

I have always fitted bike tyres myself, whether it's a knobbly or a road tyre I never bother balancing them and have never had any ill effects, even when making good progress down the dual carriage way

I have never fitted car tyres but that's only because I don't have the right tool to not make a mess of alloys. If I had the right tool or had steels I would do my own car tyres, maybe it's time I bought one of those nylon ended bars mentioned earlier in this thread

 

[hotrodder]

All this talk of £15/tyre equalling massive hourly rates, go past any tyre shop round my neck of the woods and most of the time the staff are sitting idle or sweeping the floor...
Puncture repairs on push bikes is a similar deal, last century the going rate in central London was a fiver labour to fit a new tube and no shops would do patch repairs for obvious reasons. Buy in large enough quantities and the tubes cost about 50p ea (3.99 retail) making it extremely profitable for less than 5mins work but not something that you can get 8 hours/day work from
As far as tyre profit margins go Andy Alabama told me to buy from Camskill when i asked him for a price on some Goodyear Assymetrics as he claimed they sell them for less than he can buy them

No excuses for the tyre shops spouting nonsense about shoulder/sidewall repairs being illegal but i can understand why they do it. Your average punter has less than no clue so what's the point in explaining why they're only allowed to use a simple glued plug for certain punctures and a shoulder repair requires way more expensive kit for a hot vulcanised repair, can't be done while you wait, will cost a chunk more and has various other caveats that results in it only being economical on a tyre that was brand new a week ago and not a cheapnese ditchfinder much of the time [/tongue in cheek]
Ignoring the arguments about inner tubes not being properly compatible with the rough interior of tubless tyres they don't get around the shoulder repair thing(?) and are relatively pointless these days as even the smallest of shopping trolleys with sensible wheel/tyre sizes are still usually lower profile than is deemed suitable for innertubes

 

[colnerov]

Hi, Ahh yes inner tubes and tubeless tyres. Don't get me started on that!! I haven't experienced this personally because I change all my own tyres. But reading on a number of forums about people who go in with classic car rims that didn't come with the safety beads, the tyre shops insist on fitting inner tubes even though it's a tubeless tyre. They say without the safety bead it's dangerous, even though it was common practice not so many years ago. In the event of a puncture how is a deflated tube going to keep a tyre on the bead? I think it's just another earn for them particularly as you will be back again for another because the tyre has chaffed through the tube.

Colin

 

[lazybones51]

I use normal tyre levers and a bit of hosepipe over the section of rim I'm working on...

Alloys on the bike and disco, steels on the s3 and 106, all been fine so far.

Will have to give the hose pipe trick a try, I have some "rim protectors" but they are crap and just fall off. I use a set of 240mm Buzzetti levers on the bikes.

 

[rich the mechanic]

I was told that the coloured dot on new tires should be put in line with the hole for the valve. Apparently tires are check for balance at the factory, wether this is right or not I don't know.

this is true however you can rotate from this point and in some cases balance without weights.

 

[eSCHEn]

Well got four new boots on yesterday at a local place recommended to me.

The chimp that did them has only gone and jacked the bottom seam up into the floor. Also there's about for pound of weights on each wheel as he never cleaned the muck of when balancing.

*Sigh*

In happier news at least she eventually passed her mot.

 

[Wallace]

Helped a mate do a pair of tyres on his 600 Hornet including a static balance. I now count all the rim protectors before popping the bead back up as neither of us noticed one had dropped in the front tyre now balanced and fitted back on the bike!

 

[brightspark]

I bought a manual tyre changer for about £60, made a tyre bar with nylon rollers so I dont damage wheels (probably cost about £15 -£20)

and made a static wheel balancer for £5.

using a nylon blank that fits in the wheel bore, with a metal pivot in it and used a bullseye level

then add the weights arround the edge (hold in place with masking tape) until you are happy with the balance and they stick them in place. I've only got 13" and 14" wheels so this may not work as well with larger wheels.
I've had no issues with balance on the 165 and 185 mm wide tyres I use.

I might -make one of -those bars for ally wheels I just got-a bar given for steel wheels with the curved end broke free, il make a new bit and weld it on

 

[DAPPH]

15 quid a wheel around here, that's loose wheels too, add a fiver if they're on the vehicle... Adds up too quickly for me.

I've often just laid the wheel down by the fitted wheel of a vehicle and run forward with the vehicle .. rarely has it not popped the bead .
Getting the popped tyre off the rim .......... give it a smear of Sarfega to lube the rim and then use a round edged flat bar to ease the rubber over the rim , tapping it around the rim with a 2 pound hammer .

Getting it balanced .. As you have to do up & down balancing and wobble side to side I leave that to those who have nice and expensive accurate machinery to do it . I used to do it with nappy cream and the ancient Churchill wheel balancer where you fitted the weights at the "V" of a heart shaped pattern . That wouldn't be anywhere near good enough for todays lightweight high speed tyres not even a caravan tyre.

Two years ago I had a National tyre fitting company fella tell me that he would not balance my caravan tyres . So I took my custom elsewhere as I'm a full City and Guilded Motor Vehicle Engineer ( all grades with distinction passes )

For those who try self balancing their tyres , find someone with spinal injury and let them tell you how well you have balanced your tyres . .



Getting the basic seal on a refitted tyre can be problematic if you don't have a good compressor .
A two second spray of EasyStart ether , inside the tyre and then a dropped burning match into the general area causes tan explosion of the mixture to produce enough sudden gas to blow the tyre up on to the rim all round .. It is noisy and can be dangerous but needs must when the devil drives .
I did my mates Trooper a few months ago as it was 3/4 mile from the track and in deep mud . The tyre had fully deflated and would have started to come off the rim had he carried on driving .

There are also loads of You Tube videos showing the " Ether inflation " being done on some of the larger cross country low pressure tyre vehicles .