I selected the Continental Extremecontact DWS06 Plus as my tire of choice and I got them for $830 after tax from Tire Rack. My Pegasus wheels are the 18 inch ones so changing them was gonna be slightly more difficult.
The tire changer I chose was the No Mar Classic HD. Originally designed for motorcycles, it’s also suitable for car tires. The classic HD is rated up to 255 section tires so it fit the need for me my tires being 235. Nifty thing about this unit had the capability of mounting to the tow hitch of my mother’s XC90. Since I don’t have adequate floor space for mounting it, this was perfect. Make sure to add the Posi Clamps and Spoonbar tire irons.
To start the process, breaking the bead was the first step. With tires as low profile as mine, this was not going to be easy. The first 2 beads were extremely frustrating to break. Me being not a very big guy, I didn’t have the weight, and to add to the frustration, the XC90’s suspension was absorbing the force. A fix for this is inserting a jack stand below the changer. After doing this, the 3rd and 4th beads were much easier to break.
The next step was removing the wheel from the tire. This is the easy part. Using the demount side of the mount/demount bar, the tire is lifted and the bead is pulled up and over the edge of the rim. After which, dropping the center post, just spin it around and repeat the process with the back bead.
With the tire off the wheel, this is the opportunity to clean the wheel and discover any potential issues. I removed the old wheel weights and my wheels had clamp on weights on the back side which I did not like considering there was none in the front. This is also the time to thoroughly clean the inside of the wheel with isopropyl alcohol so the new weights will stick better. Another good thing to do if you are match balancing your tires is use the bubble balancer to see which point of the wheel is the heaviest (hint, it’s not always the valve stems). I also cleaned the rim edge of the old tire residue with a plastic scraper (scotch brite pad works too as this is the mating surface). After all of this is done, it is time to mount the tire.
The easy part is getting the back bead on the tire. Since the tire is able to take on any shape, simply push the tire onto the wheel at an angle and it should slide right on. The hard part and the part where I almost gave up is the front bead. The hardest part of this is keeping the top bead of the tire in the drop center. Without bead clamps, this was nearly impossible and it forced me to rethink for a bit. First set of 2 bead clamps off Amazon I bought broke on the 2nd tire. I recommend the set of 4 from Amazon. With 4, I was able to easily move them around and simply rotate around the wheel until the front bead finally made it over the tire. The last 2 took me less than 10 minutes to mount each.
With the tire on the wheel, now it’s time to seat the bead. I used a 3 gallon air compressor from Harbor Freight which worked fine but was on quite a lot. The back bead seated around 10psi, the front between 15 and 20 (be aware, it is quite the pop). After all this was done, it was time to balance the wheel using the bubble balancer. It worked decently well and after driving the car a bit later, there were no noticeable vibrations at highway speeds (my old tires were really bad at the end of their life).
After all that, the tire was finally ready to go onto the car and I sure was glad to have that headache out of the way. I saved potentially hundreds of dollars in labor and learned a lot in the process.
In conclusion, this unit has a learning curve. Once mastered, a set of tires could be done in a morning or an afternoon. I plan on using this on all my friend’s and family cars as well. The unit was not cheap, but with 4 sets of tires done, it’ll pay for itself.