ultred ragnusen wrote:

In summary, you DIY because you ENJOY doing the job right, not because you
want to save money, where you'd be hard pressed to find any repair on a
vehicle that you don't save money if you do it yourself.

Can you even name a /single/ common maintenance task on a vehicle that a
DIY doesn't save you money on over the cost for the tools?

BTW, I've heard every argument from every naysayer already, almost all of
whom have never done the job themselves (except Clare, who seems to hate
the DIY job, so that changes his perspective completely - and that's
understandable because DIY is about ENJOYING what you're doing - it's not
about saving money - because ALL DIY jobs save money).

The one and only thing you can't do at home easily is dynamically balance
the tires ... but ... what you can (easily) do is the dynamic balance test.

The test is simple. You simply drive at speed.

In all my tire changing at home, I have had only one tire that I balanced
that had a dynamic imbalance, and that turned out to be because the weight
I put on fell off.

I'm /sure/ there are dynamic imbalance issues in many cars - and, in fact,
if it's only 1 out of 100, that's enough reason for a shop to dynamically
balance /all/ tires, because they can't afford a customer a day complaining
about the vibration.

Bear in mind that vehicles were statically balanced for decades, and that
when you statically balance at home, you do a fantastically good job, and
especially if you've mounted the carcass by the dots, you've used as small
a weight as is possible already.

There are some who argue that you can have a dynamic imbalance and not know
it, but that's just their utter fear of the unknown kicking in.

If you remove all this fear of the unknown (like the idiotic concept that
mounting your tires at home is somehow less gentle than it is to mount them
at a shop), then what you end up with is a job that is about as complex as
is changing your oil or climbing on a ladder to clean out the gutters.

Like all DIY jobs, you do it because you ENJOY doing it yourself, but, like
all DIY jobs, the tools pay for themselves, and like all DIY jobs, you do
them at your convenience.

For example, I buy tires by the specs from Simple Tires, generally with
free shipping (which is critical because Tire Rack UPS shipping is
something like $15 to $20 per tire alone!) and I have the UPS guy deliver
them right to the side of my house (he's used to it by now).

Then, whenever I feel like it, I spend an hour to mount and balance the
tires, in my pajamas if that's how I feel at that moment.
https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...ht+mount+tires

It's that easy.

Anyone who says otherwise, either hates the task (like Clare seems to), or
has never done it.

Just look at the youtube videos, for example, where it's pretty darn easy,
but my recommendation is to use the half-dozen tricks I already mentioned,
such as bolting the mounter to the ground (I've done it on a pallet but
it's just not worth the trouble).