On Mon, 12 Dec 2016 23:45:12 +0000 (UTC), Frank Baron advised:

I have a question about mounting and balancing tires at home that didn't
come up when I was researching this problem. If you have never mounted or
balanced your own passenger-car tires, then you won't know the answers
(most likely) but if you have, you'll know because you must have solved
this problem.

I have the Harbor Freight Pittsburgh Manual Tire Changer HF item #62317
which is mounted in concrete so that it is stable.

That tire changer comes with a "bead breaker" but the bead is just not
breaking when I used it today!
http://i.cubeupload.com/f8FCTC.jpg

I also bought a couple of Harbor Freight item #61603 Pittsburgh 24 in.
General Purpose Tire Irons.
http://i.cubeupload.com/7q7Tq0.jpg

The problem is that the harbor freight tire changer bead breaker just seems
to slip off when following the instructions.
http://i.cubeupload.com/7CdvVu.jpg

I would be glad to use the the Harbor Freight item #67403 Tire Bead Breaker
with Swan Neck:
http://i.cubeupload.com/Qcg2YR.jpg

But it doesn't come with instructions.
Have you used these goose-neck bead breakers on passenger tires?

Which way does the goose-neck go?
a. It can't fit under the rim with the finger pointing up, and,
b. It can't fit under the bead with the finger pointing down.

So how did you use this bead breaker anyway?

The main problem is simply that I have a tough tire (a 108T, which is a
pretty thick SUV tire compared to much easier passenger car tires), and
that the harbor freight tire-changing tool requires modification to work on
such tough tires without bending.

I took my time to document what I learned so that the next person who uses
the same equipment can benefit from the 20/20 hindsight this tutorial
provides them for how to use the harbor freight tire changer to:
a. Break the lower bead of the old tire away from the wheel
b. Break the upper bead of the old tire away from the wheel
c. Remove the upper bead of the old tire from the wheel
d. Remove the lower bead of the old tire from the wheel
e. Remove the old Schrader valve and stem assembly
f. Insert the new Schrader valve and stem assembly
g. Place the lower bead of the new tire on the wheel
h. Place the upper bead of the new tire on the wheel
i. Align the red (or yellow) dot to the valve stem (or to the wheel
match-mounting mark)
j. Seat the beads by filling the tire with air
k. Check the valve stem clearance, match mounting marks, and adjust
pressure to normal psi

The goal is that they start knowing all the things that I just learned
today, which make the job far easier and which makes the tools work far
better.

The first thing I did was straighten out the bent bead-breaking wedge bars,
which was so easy to do one might conclude that they're actually made of
rubber.
http://i.cubeupload.com/JfWmot.jpg

What the bead breaker shovel needs, from the start, is a bit of support,
which is shown here (but after using it, I realized it needs to be about 2
inches from the top of the wedge to leave clearance for the rim of the
wheel when breaking beads).

Luckily this wedge simply moved out of the way because it was just press
fit in and wrapped with solid 120V copper wire. (Given more time, I would
not weaken the bars any further by drilling bolt holes - but - I would
strap in a rectangular block of wood instead of this fence post, which just
happened to be handy.)
http://i.cubeupload.com/hzdzpZ.jpg

I started on the inside bead, which I'm told, is the harder one to break.

By moving the Clovis pin to the outside adjustment hole (making the angle
about 90 degrees to the tire), and with this artificially strengthened
wedge, I was (finally) able to apply (far) more force on the 108T tire bead
without the wedge slipping off the bead itself.
http://i.cubeupload.com/VIu5nb.jpg

The fence post got in the way of the rim as shown in this photo, so, if you
permanently mount it, make sure it's shorter by about 2 or 3 inches than
the space allotted, and make sure it's mounted up high and not low where
mine is now.

Notice how the wooden block hits the rim?
You don't want that.

You want the block to stay higher up, away from the rim by a couple of
inches.
But, in this case, it didn't matter because the block moved when pressure
was placed on it.
http://i.cubeupload.com/kYwRJt.jpg

The stronger wedge plus the 90 degree angle from using the furthest-out of
the 3 adjustment pin holes allowed me to apply enough force to finally pop
the inside-rim bead of the admittedly strong 108T tire sidewall.
http://i.cubeupload.com/tMHBFS.jpg

Only after I popped the underside tire bead did I try to remove the lever
arm, where I found that it bent at about a 10 or 15 degree angle. It took
that much force, but you have to also realize that this harbor freight
metal is soft as rubber.
http://i.cubeupload.com/3q4ZU3.jpg

After straightening the bent tire iron as much as I could, and after moving
the clovis pin to the center hole to get more of an angle, and using a tire
iron to keep a depressed bead down, I easily popped the upper bead.
http://i.cubeupload.com/k527JN.jpg

Placing the tire iron flat step with the step side up, allowed me to start
spinning the top bead off the wheel rim without lubrication:
http://i.cubeupload.com/Zf44Tl.jpg

Adding dish detergent helped a lot to spin the top bead off, where I'd say
it's a requirement to have lubrication but everything gets slippery, even
the tools, so try to keep it off the tools.
http://i.cubeupload.com/hdveUJ.jpg

You repeat the process for the lower bead, with the tire iron again going
in step-side up as in the first bead (the same way as it did for the upper
bead).
http://i.cubeupload.com/5BIFb7.jpg

Once the tire was off the rim, I cut off the old 1-1/4 inch tire valve
from the underside with a utility knife, where the old valve was in
surprisingly good shape, so I might have kept it had I not wanted to test
out the 4-way valve-seating tool and the fit of the longer new 1-1/2 inch
long tire valves.
http://i.cubeupload.com/f5L099.jpg

After lubricating the new 1-1/2 inch valve with dish soap, I threaded on
the 4-way tool and pulled it through so easily that it was shockingly
simple.

Later you'll see I have a much better idea to replace that silly 4-way tool
that I already have in my compressor toolbox, so I never needed the silly
4-way tool in the first place, but I didn't realize that until later.
http://i.cubeupload.com/goBGRq.jpg

Only later, when I was filling the tire with air, did I realize that a
handy tool for pulling the valve would have been my compressor
football/soccer-ball needle-valve tool, with the needle valve removed,
which spins onto the valve threads with ease and which has a nice trigger
handle to grab onto so that the valve can be pulled into place.

But I didn't think of this at the time I was seating the first valve, so,
it's just a lesson learned for the future, and for someone else who happens
to read this for hints on how to do the job without that silly 4-way valve
seating tool (which is never needed).
http://i.cubeupload.com/Zr23tu.jpg

The bottom bead of the new tire went on 3/4 of the way by hand, and then
with a two-foot tire iron, the last quarter went on relatively easily.
http://i.cubeupload.com/mA6HJx.jpg

It's important to remember to flip the tool and set the hook side
appropriately because you're not going to seat the top bead unless you have
the tool oriented this way exactly. (Lord knows what the other tip is use
for.)
http://i.cubeupload.com/3xskBg.jpg

You'll want to ensure you seat the bead at the tire-valve first because
that last quarter gets dicey where you have to use the most strength in the
whole job, and where a slippery bar gets obnoxious.

I had to vise grip the end of the bar that I was holding because it kept
twisting off the bead but with vise grips, it was manageable.

At the very least, you'll want to use vise grips to hold the slippery upper
bead from slipping off as you try to force the last 1/4 of the upper bead
onto the rim.
http://i.cubeupload.com/r6g3JG.jpg

This is the point where you're extremely glad the tool is firmly bolted to
cement, as the force is as much as you can give it.

Even so, I found I had to ditch the slippery but huge red pry bar and
resort to two 24-inch tire irons to leverage the remaining upper bead over
onto the wheel rim.
http://i.cubeupload.com/czF7Qu.jpg

It's at this point, before you fill the tire with air, that you line up the
red dot to the match-mounting marks, or, the yellow dot to the valve stem
(if there is no red dot) or if there is a red dot but no match mounting
marks, then you line up the red dot to the valve stem.

After doing that, I first removed the inner valve stem of the Schrader
valve and tried to use my latching air chuck, but without the valve stem,
the darn chuck wouldn't pass any air (so I gave up on this method).
http://i.cubeupload.com/WJGeQr.jpg

It was dark and drizzly when I just decided to put the valve stem back in
and put the latching chuck back on (although later I found a neat trick
that I will try with the next tire).

It turns out that having the valve stem in or out really made no difference
whatsoever, it seems, with respect to getting the air inside and getting
the bead to seat.

The trick to seating the bead is really to have two hands free to hold the
tire edges and jiggle, wiggle, coerce, tug and jerk the tire as it's loose
when you're trying to get the bead to seat.

Once you get the tire in a certain position, you can just feel it starting
to blow up, where it seats and finally pops a few times as you work up the
pressure to 40, 50, and 60 psi.
http://i.cubeupload.com/5RH8RC.jpg

Further proof that the silly 4-way tool is worthless is the fact that it
doesn't have a pin for letting the air out of the valve to drop the
pressure down from 60 psi back to 40 where it belongs.

Rummaging around in my compressor kit, I found this needle-valve which is
normally used to inflate footballs and soccer balls, but which deflates the
tire without sharp points like those that are on the silly and useless
4-way tool.
http://i.cubeupload.com/aS0xdG.jpg

It was at this point that I realized that the football/soccerball inflator
handle can be used for the next tire to inflate the tire quickly without
the schrader valve being in place, so I will try it this way on the next
tire to see if it works.

(It may require a third hand to press the trigger, but I can probably wire
the trigger pressed because both hands will be needed to coerce the tire
into momentarily seating while the air is filling it up.)
http://i.cubeupload.com/DZJO2y.jpg

At this point it's time to make two checks of the valve stem.

Ensure the red (radial runout) dot is at the valve stem
Ensure with a straight edge that the valve doesn't stick out past the rim


Since it was dark, I didn't bother looking for match mounting marks on the
old rim, so, I simply lined up the red dot with the tire valve since the
red dot indicates the tire's high point for radial runout and radial force
variation, which takes precedence over the yellow dot which indicates the
tire's light spot which would have been paired with the valve stem on the
wheel which is the wheel's heavy spot had the red dot not existed.
http://i.cubeupload.com/1dxFGN.jpg