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After seeing other ideas out on the net I’ve been mulling the Idea of my own tire changer over in my head for quit a while. Well after paying 25 to 30 bucks a wheel for mounting and balancing for years, I finally put pen to paper or welding wire to steel in this case and built my tire changer.

First off let’s give credit where credit is due. I go the idea of using a 14” steel car wheel with a threaded rod to hold the tire in place from Adam Glass and his web site can be seen here http://www.clarity.net/~adam/tire-changing.html. His method required using tire levers but I wanted something that would allow me to use a mount dismount bar.

I started with Adams 14” steel wheel idea but welded it to a piece of pipe with some brackets welded to the bottom to mount it to my garage floor. The car Wheel could be anchored to the floor with some other sturdily built stand that did not require welding. If you can get access to a MIG welder sticking metal together is pretty easy. Up close my weld aren’t pretty but they suffice. I used a couple feet of ¾ all-thread as the means of clamping the wheel in place. It’s long enough and stiff enough (that’s what she said) to lever the mount dismount bar around with. I also had to trim the top edge of the 14” well to reduce its diameter so it would fit my rear wheel. I think a standard 17” rear sport bike wheel would fit with out trimming the 14” steel wheel but I have single sided swing arm and my wheel would not rest nicely on the spokes with out trimming down the steel wheel diameter. The edge of the car wheel is covered with some 3/8” fuel line cut down the edge; I glued it on with liquid nails. The cut-out is to make space for the valve stem.

On the side of the 14” wheel support I welded a small piece of ½” steel pipe. This will act as pivot point for my bead breaker. The lever is two pieces of 1” flat stock bolted together with more pieces of ½” pipe as spacers. The part that actually does the “bead braking” is a piece of wood since it won’t scratch any thing. I went with oak because I plan to have this contraption a long time and want it to last. The bolt that holds the lever to the support is hand tight so the lever can be easily removed. The front motor cycle wheel is resting on some padded 2x4’s to keep the disks from getting bent. The boot lace that make the whole thing look very Erector-set crane like, holds the lever up so I position the wheel and tire.

Here is the bead breaker in action. It provides ample leverage to pop the tire bead away from the wheel. Once bead is broken in one spot I had no problem working the rest down by hand. Then simply flip and repeat. Notice the empty hole in the lever, I miss judged the needed travel the first time around.

Here is the wheel with the old tire all mounted up. It takes a while to thread the nut all the down the all-thread. You must make sure you don’t over tighten the nut if you use this method to secure a motorcycle wheel. There is nothing preventing the nut pulling the center of the sport bike wheel down into the stand and permanently dishing your high priced 17” motorcycle wheel. Really just snug the nut up with a wrench and only tighten in small increments if the wheel starts to walk on you while using the mount dismount bar.

In the close up you can see how the disk brake just fits down in the steel car wheel. Also the washer stack under the mounting nut consist of rubber, nylon and then steel, again to keep any thing from touching the wheel that could mar it.

I went with the high quality mount dismount bar made by No-Mar, it has all plastic tips that can’t scratch your wheel. You can purchase them here http://www.nomartirechanger.com and watch videos on how to use it. I use the mount dismount bar exactly the same way with my set up. For $100 you get the bar, 3 extra dismount tips, tire lube and tire lube past. It is well worth the money and works as advertised. Here it is just starting to dismount the old tire.

Notice I slide a piece of PCV pipe over the all-thread rod; this protects the threads and the finish of the mount dismount bar. Also it sticks up past the end of the all-thread and has a cap on it protect clumsy operators such as my self.

Here is a close up of dismount tip. I wrapped end just above the tip with a little electrical tape to provide a little additional protection for the motorcycle wheel. I found an old motorcycle wheel and tire to practice with. The wheel had a very stiff side wall and broke the tip on the mount dismount bar while practicing. I ended up using tire levers on this wheel. The No-Mar web site talks about this. However on my softer sport bike tire I had no such problem. Another trick is to put the old tire/wheel and new tire in the sun for a hour or so to warm and soften it up.

Here is the mounting side of the mount dismount bar to slide on a brand new Pilot Power. Getting the tire paste lube in the right place helps a lot here. The No-Mar web site has excellent online videos on how to do this.

Here is the mounting business end of the No-Mar bar. The head is set at a slight angle so the bar work best in the clockwise direction.

My tire balance is form Marc Parnes http://www.marcparnes.com/index.html. It simple and strait forward to use on a pair of jack stands. I need the $130 version to use with the single side swing arm wheel.

The total cost:

14” Old Steel Wheel $10 from a local tire shop.
Steel $20 from a local scrap yard.
Primer & Paint $10.
Mount Dismount Bar $100 from NoMarTireChanger.com.
Balancer $130 from MarcParnes.com.

Total cost: $270

This will likely pay for it self in 2 to 3 years with my usual 10 to 15 thousand miles of riding a year. It’s also convenient to not have to take my wheels to the bike shop, pay 60 bucks and have to wait a day or two to get them back. Also it provides a good stand to hold my dirt bike wheels while using tire levers to pry the knobbies off and on with.