On Monday, April 9, 2012 at 10:51:50 PM UTC-7, oldjag wrote:
I was given a 60's vintage Coats Tireman 3 star manual tire changer.
It's in working order, except the tire iron, or mount/demount bar is
missing. It has a hand operated upper and lower bead breaker. I ran
across another somewhat older unit, probably from the 50's, that has a
bar about 4' long, one end is sort of spoon shaped and the other, I
guess the mounting end, has two ~3" wheels and a 3/8" diameter roller
to kinda skate the tire on I guess.

It looks like I could make a copy of the demount/mount bar pretty
easily, but I'm not sure if part of the bar is supposed to go through
the square hole in the swivel at the top of the center post. The
older machine I saw, as well as the Coat's current model 310 manual
changer don't have this feature.

I called Coats and they were no help. A replacement bar for the new
manual changer is $180, so I don't think that's in the cards, and I
think I want to cover the ends with UHMW sleeves so I can use it on
some of my aluminum rims.

When I used to race my GT2 car in the late 90's the Goodyear and
Hoosier tire trucks were still using manual machines at the track and
the tire guys could change low profile radial slick in a couple of
minutes...with some experience of course.

Anyone here ever use a similar machine?