E-Bay tire machines.

RedGT wrote: I wish I had an answer for you. In theory I want a set, in practice I have no room for it and at approx $20/set of four at the little shop I go to, $12 of which is disposal fee I have to pay anyway, it would take forever to pay off.

Like Toyman, the pay off is in the convenience of not having to reschedule my life to get a set of tires mounted. That is the #1 reason I want one and will be one of the first things I buy if I can build a shop.

What we need to find next is some sort of tire shredder that doesn't cost $$$$$ (and isn't the size of a small house and needs 480V power) to convert old tires into rubber mulch... (off to Google I go...) edit: not looking promising... although part of me wonders if a wood chipper could be made to work.

In reply to Ian F:

I take my take-offs to the track when I go. Summit Point just adds them to the tire wall / mosquito farm they call safety barriers ;)

In reply to Huckleberry:

The local recycle center will take two tires per trip. I'll have to ask CMP if they want them though.

Toyman01 wrote: In reply to Huckleberry: The local recycle center will take two tires per trip. I'll have to ask CMP if they want them though.

On bulk trash day Cleveland takes whatever fits on 8' of treelawn once a month tires included . My rental and my sister are both in the city

Old tires aren't easy to get rid of where I live. My twp doesn't really have a "recycling center" where they take old stuff. It's one thing I miss about my ex-. The twp where she lives will take up to 8 tires per trip - all year long. Never paid for tire disposal while we were together. They also took bulk oil and coolant. The official questioned me a couple of times when I'd show up with my 8 gallon, under-lift oil container, but I explained we had 8 cars and using this just meant I dumped less often.

I suppose I could just sawzall tires into smaller pieces and dump them into trash bags for regular collection, but I'd rather not.

Toyman01 wrote: In reply to Huckleberry: The local recycle center will take two tires per trip. I'll have to ask CMP if they want them though.

What is this "asking" thing you speak of?

Order confirmation received. Shop space is being cleared. Weights and other accessories are on the way.

New friends will be interrogated sharply about needed tire changes before friendship is accepted.

Does anyone want a 10 table saw for cheap? It hasn't been used in years and something has to go.

Like this.

I have the same table saw taking up room in my garage.

In reply to oldopelguy:

It needs a friend doesn't it.

Sorry we have one on the trailer and 2 in the shop

Of note: i was having a tough time with 12" wide rims. Not because of the rim but because the tire was hitting the arm of the machine. With the duckbill thing all the way down it was at the rim clamps, which is useless. I made 3" spacer blocks last night and got longer bolts for the upright part(air tank/arm mount). Now i have 3" more room to do wide tires and it still goes low enough to mount a frontrunner on a 15x4. Should make the huge slicks easier.

The freight company showed up 4 days early.

I'm not going to have much time to mess with the machines until Sunday evening.

How heavy are these things? Are they a pain to move into the shop?

In reply to Slippery:

They showed up in 3 crates. The balancer, the tire machine, and the assist arm.

The assist arm was fairly light, probably 300#. We moved it with a hand truck.

The balancer was also around 300# and moved with a hand truck without much problem.

The tire machine is freaking heavy. Around 700-800#. We could slide it with the hand truck, but moving it far would be out. We used the freight company's pallet jack to roll it around to the back shop. Once out of the box, it's movable, but it's heavy and will require a couple of strong backs to get it to it's final resting place.

Here's where we are so far.

Crating was outstanding. There was zero damage to anything. The tire machine had about a quart of oil dumped over it so rust wasn't a issue. I was very impressed with the way they were packaged.

Balancer.

Tire machine.

That's as far as I made it before having to go to a school play for my youngest. It will be late Sunday afternoon before I get back to them. So far, I'm impressed with the quality of the machines. Everything I've put together so far has fit perfectly.

More to come.

That's not too bad. You can always roll them on a couple of round bars, I moved a Bridgeport like that and made it a breeze.

If I lived closer to you I would be trying to be your next best friend I'd offer to set them up and break them in for you, lol.

This was my car today. Its incredible what fits in the trunk of an e30. Thats four 18x9 wheels in the trunk.

In reply to Slippery:

Pretty shiny stuff in the trunk.

I put up a FB post about the machines. I'm pretty sure I have lots of "new" friends, and a couple that are asking about prices to use the machines.

That's awesome.

I hope you have a good air compressor, those tire machines use a lot more air than one would think.

In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid:

80 gallon tank, with a Quincy 325 and a 5hp motor, should do the trick.

It's old, but I think it will keep up.

Nice! I'm insanely jealous right now.

Today I finished up the assembly on the tire machine. Naturally I hooked up the air to it, and promptly blew the main line going to the column tank. It looks like the fitting failed. There are no fittings available on a Sunday afternoon, so I dug through my brass fittings for a couple of hose barbs and some hose. That repaired, I hooked up the air again, and promptly blew the other fitting on the column tank.

I'm not sure if the fittings were bad, or I didn't connect them well enough. When they failed, the actually blew the locking parts out of the fittings. I haven't contacted Mayflower about this yet.

Repaired one more time, I hooked it up to the compressor again. I have a pile of wheels for the Lemons Civic with 7 year old tires that needed to be dismounted, so I pulled a couple of them out to practice. I'll say this, the machines aren't as easy to use as they look. After a couple of tries and watching a video, I successfully dismounted and remounted a tire.

Next up was the balancer. It's pretty simple. I balanced a trailer tire, and tossed one of the Lemons race tires on it to see if it still balanced.

The tire machine in all it's glory.

The balancer.

I'm not sure these are going to stay here so the balancer is still sitting on furniture dollies.

I assume you've coordinated the pressure between your compressor and the input rating of the tire machine?

In reply to Ian F:

The machine is rated at 145psi, my compressor is set to 120.

bad gauge on the compressor?

In reply to grover:

The gauge on the compressor agrees with the gauge on the tire machine. I think I just didn't get the fittings plugged in correctly. All the other fitting are holding fine.

Update.

I just finished mounting and balancing my first set of tires. Damn I love these things.

They weren't race tires, just a set for my son's minivan.

My eldest grandson got to run the balance machine. He was ecstatic.