Tire installation places
 

Is there any place in the Twin Cities that is reasonable when it comes to installing tires that aren't purchased through them? I mean, hell, Discount Tire still charges you to install tires purchased through them. They want $11 per wheel, or $44 per set. Just wondering if it was this obnoxious everywhere or not.

Re: Tire installation places
 

Discount charges that to cover the price of valve stems, wheel weights, and labor (but is still a descent amount of cash). Your gonna run into this pretty much anywhere else you go though.

Re: Tire installation places
 

Sams Club and Costco used to charge $8 per tire mounted and balanced. I think Costco has since dropped that pricing policy. But I believe Sams Club now does it for $9 per tire.

Re: Tire installation places
 

Check out Tire Rack's recomended installers, from what I've seen though, they are all in the $20-30 range depending on tire size, etc.

Wal-Mart does it for $5 last time I checked, but I'd only go there if its on a car/wheels you don't care about.

I've PMed you with a person to contact.

Re: Tire installation places
 

Do NOT go to tires plus on University. They scratched all 4 of my rims and had trouble getting slightly wider tires than stock on. Completely incompetant. Just a heads up.

Re: Tire installation places
 

Discount Tire uses plastic duckheads so they are alot harder to scratch up your shit.

Re: Tire installation places
 

Don't know how they managed it, but they did. Mostly along the spokes.

Re: Tire installation places
 

Actually, $11/wheel doesn't seem bad at all, I just paid $120 to have one set of tires taken off some rims and put on another set of rims. It's usually $25/wheel at most places if you don't buy through them.

I'll be set up to do this stuff in the next week, I just bought a changer and balancer. I haven't figured out pricing yet, I'll have to try a few and see how long it takes.

Re: Tire installation places
 

What kind of equipment did you get?

Re: Tire installation places
 

That would be nice to have. In my opinion it shouldnt take longer than 30 minutes for 4 stardard passenger tires. Performance tires shouldnt take more than an hour. It all comes with practice though.

What equipment did you get btw?

Oh, and you have a PM.

Re: Tire installation places
 

4 tires if they are off a car probably takes 15mins to dismount and 15 minutes to balance if you are extremely slow.

Re: Tire installation places
 

I got a Coats 40-40 changer and a Nortran balancer. I just ordered some wheel protectors today since this might scuff up nice rims without it. I'm still messing around with them, but I should get pretty quick at it after a couple trys.

Re: Tire installation places
 

I would look into getting a plastic "head" for the tire changing unit. It pretty much eliminates scratching up wheels, especially if you follow the procedures you would with a steel wheel.

Re: Tire installation places
 

Sounds like you have the setup. Nothing different that the 'professional' shop that I work for.:D

If you had a road force balancer you would be top notch but we have been doing without for about 5 years now with minimal problems. You should be fine.:)

Re: Tire installation places
 

Steve can you do static balances in the future?

Re: Tire installation places
 

Why would you want a static balance instead of a dynamic balance?

Re: Tire installation places
 

Yea I got that wrong, I meant using tape style weights on the inside of the wheel vs the lip attached weights.

Re: Tire installation places
 

Yeah, tape weights should be no problem.

I ordered the plastic protectors yesterday, I won't get them for 3-4 weeks, so I can only do cheapie rims right now. I practiced yesterday with a 14" spare tire, that was a little tough with virtually no sidewall. I have to change out a Volvo tire today, hopefully I can do it without scuffing the rim at all.

Re: Tire installation places
 

We're not cheap, but the GAS STATION I work at has a Corghi ARTIGLIO MASTER automatic touchless tire machine and a Hunter GSP9700 balancer (really nice stuff), and we have normal tire stuff for normal wheels and tires. We just put on some tires on some staggered 19" 2 or 3 piece SSR rims for a customer. It's cool that I have access to all this! I think we charge like 28 dollars per rim to mount and balance a tire.