When I purchace new tires for my truck I always mount the tires by myself, by hand, and I never have them balanced, and never had any problem. I have a bead breaker hammer, and tire irons, and i can dismount and mount a tire by hand just as fast as anybody doing it on a tire machine. Everybody thinks im crazy doing that myself, but I don't want my chrome wheels scrached, or some tire guy cracking the plastic on my truck with the floor jack handle. I also find some great deals on used tires, I got a set of Kelly Safari's for only $60 and they had 1/2 tread.

 

It serves the same purpose and was originally done this way for many years. It's especially easy to install new tires on wheels with the tires already dismounted (some can be done with no tools whatsoever). In the olden days, balancing was done manually too. Today's wide, low-profile tires on wide rims are extremely hard to mount and dismount manually. A skilled technician using top-of-the-line tire and balancing machines of today functions much better, is more accurate, and causes less damage.

 

i work at a tire store and garuntee that you cant mount and dismount a tire by hand as fast as i can on the machine. it just cant be done that fast.

 

I'll second that.

todays tires are harder to balance....get on and off...expecially the low profile ones.

I trust a machine designed to do it properly

 

Dear 450rider I have been changing tires by hand since I was a kid, i even used to use a hand pump tire pump instead of a compressor. Now I have a compressor, sometimes I have trouble sealing the bead, so I have to do the "Either Bomb" trick, yunzs spray the inside of the tire with starting fluid, then light a match, throw it in and quicky throw the air to it, "BOOM" hey that works. I bet I can change tires by hand just as fast, or faster than u can do it on a tire machine, no offence, you might be a good tire guy, but the tire guys I know keep cracking the plastic under my bumper with the floor jack handle as they leave the jack down, and thats one of the reasons I change my tires myself.