I got some new 245/35/18 V710s and brought em to a local shop (www.ftlperformance.com) and had them try to mount em on a spare set of stock 18" wheels I got. They're having a hell of a time trying to get them on. I searched the archives and found another post with people having similar problems, but no solutions were discussed.

Has anyone actually been a party to a successful mounting of V710s that has any tips I can give the guys at FTL?

 

I assume they got them on the wheel but could not air them up.... If they can not get them on the wheel find a new shop because they are to dumb to use the equipment.

To air them up get them hot. Let them sit in the sun for a while. Also I have found, I now have my own tire changer and do it myself, that Euro tire lube works way better than the soap and water mix most shops use.

Next I would try A n T tire in Portland, aka Trackside, they deal with a lot of race tires.

 

I see in the pics a pail of Euro tire paste so they have the right stuff. So next step is make sure they get them hot.

Some shops just can't get it.... Out of all the Americas/Discount tire Co's in Socal there are only one or two that can get them on, some guys just don't have the skills. I got tired of driving an hour to the one shop near me that could get them on so I bought my own.

 

lard is basically what the euro tire paste is. and yes, that stuff is the bomb. is the tire even on the wheel?? if you're just having problems with seating the beads, then lube up the rim and tire really well. just pump air in it til it eventually seats. sometimes you have to go over 60 PSI to seat.

if you're having trouble getting the tire on, use two tire pry bars and work it around slowly. becareful not to tear the beads. and use LOTS OF LUBE...cannot stress the lube.

if you still cannot get it done, ship the wheels and tires to me and i'll do it myself. send me $100...i'll even road force balance them.

 

One other thing to try is to turn the wheel upside down. Sometimes the mounting
surface is slightly different on the inside half of the wheel and you can get a better seal.

Make sure the shop protects the wheel face or you'll get scratches...

Does your shop have a truck tire band? They should...

 

You will be happy to know that we actually got these to hold air

We are a small shop, and do primarily race tires for autocrossers and track day guys and I have stuffed my fair share of huge tires onto stock wheels, but I have to say that these were about the toughest combination I have done. V710's have the stiffest sidewall of all the tires we do, (much stiffer than Hoosiers) and these have a short 35 series sidewall to boot!

In this case, mounting was not the problem, but did take two prybars, an orgy of lube, and some patience. The problem was in getting the tire to seat enough against the bead to begin to hold air. After a lot of work, we were able to get the tire to finally fill.

ULLOSE and DAN, you guys have done this before

Marek

 

If you think the 245-35 is tuff wait till you get a 285-30-18 and a small wheel.

 

Do you have your own machines or do you work for a shop? If they are your own, where did you get them and for how much? I have contemplated getting something like this when I get a house, but the commerical machines are SO damn expensive. Not really worth the price unless you are charging other people to change theirs.

 

I picked up a used Corghi 9820ti, commerical machine, just for my own use at home. Even though I had a shop that did all my tire changes for free it was worth it to me to save the drive time and having to deal with personal changes at the shop, tire shops have lots of turn over and every new guy would have to be shown how to do the race tires.

I have a buddy that mounts his tires by hand, yes the old school way with bars. He has done up to 335-30-17 as well as the killer 245 and 285 18s. I think he is nuts but he gets some pleasure from it.

 

From the dead!

Could anyone that has experience mounting their own tires chime in on this topic? How bad are 225/45R18s? Would tire irons, lube, and lots of elbow grease do the job, or is one of those commercial machines a necessity?

The reason I'm asking is I want to get some spare wheels and keep lots of near-dead tires (for drifting) and then replace them once they're down to the cord. I would hate to pay 25 bucks a tire each time to have them mounted. Would it be worth trying to do it myself or should I just save myself the trouble?

 

When I managed a tire shop, we used both Euro paste and Myers Tire Supply Slip Tac (blue liquid snot). I preferred the Slip Tac because it dried faster without leaving the visible white residue, and it was considerably slipperier while it was wet. On certain combinations of tire and wheel bead surface, we sometimes had runout issues due to the bead not fully seating when mounted with Euro paste, but breaking the bead, lubing it up with Slip Tac and reseating it usually cleared it up. On one of our mounting machines, the process was a little slower, so Euro paste had to be used due to its greater working time before drying.

YMMV.

Oh, yeah. I had a buddy who drove his roached '77 Chevy van to a tire shop in the ghetto and got tires mounted for $5. I went to the same place in a newer Hyundai and got charged $15. Don't know if it was because they remembered what a PITA it was the last time a white dork came and they had to mount rally tires, or if the price was on a sliding scale by the niceness of the car.

YMMV again.