I have an old Snappie bubble balancer I paid $40 for 30 years ago. I have an old tire machine I bought at the same time for $40. I change the trailer and boat tires all the time with them. I do small tractor tires and cart tires.
My Lincoln rims are Mag's and I can't do them. They get mounted free and I really never need to do truck or car tires.
They are in my tractor barn shop on the farm.
I just take the trailer and boat tires to the local shop to get repaired or replaced. I don't have a need for them out here in California.
They have saved me a lot of time and money through the years. Well worth owning if you don't need to change expensive tires.
The last sop I bought out and auctioned off hand a nice balancer and tire changer. I sold it at auction.
Bubble balancers are not good enough to get a decent balance on your tires. They will only do a static balance, not dynamic. With my balancer I can get my tires within .1 ounce dynamic - which makes a tire which you cannot feel at 80mph. It takes me about 15 minutes a tire to get them that good. Most tire shops spent about 2 minutes per tire and don't get them as close as I can.
If you have nice (large, low profile, expensive) tire/wheel setups, and do very few tire changes a year ( ie you are not experienced), you will need a more expensive machine to do a good job. Plus, if the rims are scratched, you cant get the tire shop to replace them.
I would advise against buying a tire machine as it takes up a lot of room, it is expensive ( to get a proper machine) and is seldom used.
I disagree.
I bought some pretty expensive 18 inch by 9.5 inch rims for my Miata and mounted 40 series Direzza Star Specs (very stiff sidewall) on them with my cheapo Atlas tire changer.
You do not need all the fancy helper arms. I have a plastic bead clamp and a few cubes of 2x2 wood. I took my time and used plenty of tire lube and they popped right on. I ended up buying a Cheetah bead blaster because I had one set of tires that was pretty tough to get the bead seated, but that had nothing to do with mounting them.
Anybody who scratches a rim on a modern rim clamp tire changer is being careless. If you have the plastic clamp covers, you will be fine.
I would not recommend the old "coates" style center clamp machines - those things are junk as far as I'm concerned.
$300 savings mounting and balancing a set of tires? You ever wanna sell your mount & balance setup, let me know, I'll even do your tires in the future for the low price of $200 a set!
The shop I work at is generally on the lower end for tire prices (mounted & balanced) but by no means the absolute cheapest, and we usually come out about even with someone buying from Tire Rack and paying shipping on tire price alone, and charge about average for the labor... so I'm not seeing where cost savings aside from maybe $20/tire in labor (minus your own weights) would come from?
I've been questioned on that math here before. Here's how it breaks down: 1. $100 savings on the cost of the 4 tires - I can order from Tirerack or discount tire online and have the tires the next day almost always for less than I can get them locally. Of course you can get that savings if you buy online and take them somewhere for mounting as well - but I never did that. My wife also doesn't get baited and switched to another brand of tires when she buys them - which happened more than once.
2. $80 to $100 on the cost of mounting and balancing. Almost everyone here charges $20 per tire to mount and balance. Then they try to get an extra $6-10 for road hazard warranty. Then they charge $2.50 a tire for disposal. And last time I got $5 for "shop supplies" - I suppose that's hand soap or something. Anyway, I still have to dispose of my own tires, and if I want it Tirerack will sell me road hazard, so take them out. With tax it ends up about $100 to mount and balance a set of tires. And I have never had a set balanced as well as I can get them at home, no matter what the price.
3. When tires get old and they start losing their balance and making noise, I almost always got rid of them before the tread was worn out. Whenever I took my tires in for "free rebalancing" or even paid rebalancing, I would get the worst quickie job they could do. First because they weren't making money on it, and second, I suspect they really don't care if they do a good job in hopes you will come back in and buy new tires. Anyway, that's what I and especially my wife would end up doing. "These tires don't seem to be any good anymore, it's time to get new ones".
I figure I was throwing tires away 20% sooner because they weren't balanced right. At $500 per set (yeah that's the full retail, because that's what I'm comparing to) that's $100 in savings if I can balance them right and drive them another 8,000-10,000 miles - which I can.
But you cannot balance them right with a bubble balancer and you have to know how to work the balancer properly.
Add it up you get near $300 per set of tires. I find it's a little more on expensive tires and a little less on cheaper tires. And I find that I eat some of the savings up by buying a higher quality tire than I would have in the tire store.
So what's not to like - better tires on my car, money in my pocket and they are better balanced than I could get at the store. As I said earlier it's a dirty and physically demanding job to change tires, but it doesn't take me more time. The only other downside is getting rid of used tires.
