Just what I was thinking! We have two tire machines and both of them are worn out and make those 20" 30-series tires (or worse, I want to smack the guy who thought 22" 20-series tires were a viable idea) nearly impossible to change cleanly, especially when they won't even hold the wheel down tightly or keep it even. I don't know if having a few hundred buttons and a joystick would help, but I'd love a brand new machine that works as designed!
Show him this-
Agreed.
Well, Mike does a high volume of tire sales. It's entirely up to him to buy whatever he wants. He's doing something right as he has been in business more than 25 years. There are 4-5 tire changes and 2 balancers. The shop even has a very nice hunter alignment machine and an old school pit alignment machine that doesn't get used a lot. He changes out alignment machines every 5-10 years.
A tire changer just like a Coats 5065 is what I know how to use.
Before that new machine, we used to use a machine similar to this on the low profile tires/expensive wheels. (A machine the same style, not a Chinese machine).
It worked well, but guess Mike got a good deal on the other one or was sold on its advantages. I didn't ask him exactly why he got it. He just pointed me to the new machine and I was like, uh... ok. After a quick demonstration I decided, for the sake of my fingers, my wheels & tires and the machine, I passed on putting my 225/45/17's on myself. I had enough sense to let a man I knew, that knew how to use the machine correctly, do it for me while I put tires on the vehicle he was supposed to be working on. It didn't matter to him and I wasn't slowing him down asking him for help. That just seemed like the best option at the time as they were busy, like most always.
You can say the machine was a waste of money. I didn't buy it. I have no idea how much Mike paid for it. I do know that Mike is frugal, but also isn't afraid to invest in something that will make him money.
There is a reason he has been in business 25+ years, has a 11 bay shop with 2 tire warehouses and keeps at a minimum of 6 employees, sometimes 10 including part time. His shop does Tires on large farm equipment to semi's down to a 12" wheel on a Ford Fiesta. He runs a service truck that does tire repair on farms and on the road side. There are also 2 service techs repairing cars every day. From changing engines and transmissions, head gasket jobs, air conditioning work, small jobs such as water and fuel pumps etc... I know, I use to be one of the 2 techs. I worked there 2 1/2 years. He ran and still runs a good business. Even with the economy as crappy as it is, I rarely go out to his shop and see less than 15-20 cars in the parking lot during business hours. Before the economy crash, it was more like 30-40. 4 of the employee's have been there over 15 years.
He's obviously doing something right. ;-)
We have a machine at the dealership (I forget the model, could get it next week if anybody actually cared), an "old" style (I guess "single arm"?) that uses three metal "feet" that extend outwards to clamp against the inside of the barrel of the wheel. Among its many failings is that it can't clamp the wheels tightly enough to hold them flat when you apply any significant upward force, such as when lifting the bead on a tire with sidewalls shorter than 40 series, or any kind of stiff sidewalls at all. In order to get the (metal) arm close enough to the rim to get the bead up and over it, the rim at some point in its rotation will scrape against the metal arm. To make matters worse, when lifting one of those beads up and over that arm with the tire iron, the whole arm will generally flex enough to hit the rim and often flex so far as to throw the tire iron off so that it drops onto the rim. Now the obvious answer is "don't use that machine for short or stiff sidewalls" and luckily, our other machine handles them better and is gentler. But if a shop were unfortunate enough to ONLY have a machine of such poor design and/or condition, then it would be very very difficult if not impossible to change certain tire/wheel combinations simply due to the machine, not user error. Rather than thinking of it as "blaming the tool for your mess up", maybe it would make more sense to think of this in terms of "using the correct tool for the job" and not all tire machines being the correct tool for all tire jobs.
I think you misunderstood what I wrote. The older machine does not have any capability to clamp wheels from the outside. (And no, most of the wheels we get do not have the grooves on the inside.) The newer machine will clamp wheels from the outside if necessary, and I use that one 95% of the time. It's usually not necessary to clamp them from the outside, though, because it has rubber-covered feet that clamp the inside of the barrel at apparently much higher pressures, because it never slips. I think the last time I actually bothered to clamp a wheel from the outside was when I replaced the Hoosiers (you have not seen stiff sidewalls in a passenger tire until you've messed with Hoosier R6s) on my Forgelines, which also necessitated mounting upside-down because of their design.
Please, go tell Forgeline!
Hey, otherwise they've served me well for many years, but they are probably the most inconvenient wheels in the world when it's time to change tires, I'd rather do 325/20R22s!Corvette ZR1 rear tire?
if your shop wants to do the big dunk tires(very very very low profile), your boss has gotta be getting one of these: Hunter Auto34
