Came up with this little gem changing tires on my rig the other day.
This idea only works for narrow-ish tires, so for our purposes this works best for steer tires. What you do is chuck the tire into a large vice between two thin pieces of timber (plywood specifically, but this is only necessary if you want to keep the tires nice) and gradually close the vice. Turn the tire 180 degrees and repeat.
To sum it all up with a Mission: Impossible quote, “Everyone has pressure points. You simply find them and squeeze.”
I and my dad used to use a hi-lift on tires until the jack decided to become a spring and eject while we were getting a tire off a rim. the lift point on the jack slipped off the drawbar of the Farmall h we own and it went back towards us luckily I got out the way in time and I am here to tell the story!
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Age : 45 Join date : 2019-07-02 Points : 4531 Posts : 2385 Location : Ontario, Canada
That's scary! I take it you were pushing the base down on the tire like you would for a car/truck tire? For ATV and lawn tractor tires I actually use mine like a clamp. I bolt the base down, the lower "jaw" has a upwards lip that will rest on the edge of the rim to hold it, I then lower the top "jaw" so I can use a block of wood against it and push on the tire close to the bead (curved piece of firewood woods great). I'll never claim it's not tricky but it's worked even on really stubborn tires it's just time consuming. I've done the bench vise thing and it worked excellent for my Honda Z50
yes we were using it on a truck tire it lifted the h up and the lift point on the jack slipped off I did not have the base bolted down mostly because we were working in a dirt floor barn after that incident I invested in a harbor freight bead breaker picked it for 10 bucks at the le suer pioneer power swap meet. it doesn't like big car/truck tires very much but 4 wheeler and lawn tractor tires are a breeze.