Ever Wondered How Tires Are Mounted Balanced for Your Car Truck or SUV

What's up, guys? Here at 1A Auto we've got some new tire machines. We're excited to use them. In this video we're going to show you how to replace some tires.

Now we know most of you're not gonna have your own tire machines, but maybe you're interested in what you're paying for when you go to have your tires replaced. So the first thing we're gonna do is drain the air out of the tire. Remove the valve core and let the air out of the tire. Now you're gonna check the front of the tire. If there's any wheel weights that are on the front of the tire, you wanna take those off with a wheel weight hammer, just like this on the backside. Take all these wheel weights off, just like that.

Before we get too into it, let me go over some of the pedals on this machine. Now, this pedal right here is gonna to turn the turntable. This pedal activates the bead breaker. This pedal activates the clamps on the turntable. This pedal activates the mounting and dismounting arm. And this pedal activates the air for filling the tire. We're gonna break the bead of the tire. We wanna break both beads on both sides. This tire machine has a bead breaker that's on the side, just like this. And you wanna pay attention to where the valve stem is. The valve stem on this actually has a tire monitor. So we don't wanna crush that monitor. So don't break the bead right at that position. It's gonna break that bead just like that. Then I'm gonna spin it around, paying attention to where that valve stem is and break the backside. Our bead is broken all the way around on this side and on this side.

Now I'm gonna install the tire up on this plate right here, put that like that. Then step on the button. Then the wheel's gonna be secure. Some machines have the arm where you just have to swing it out and put it in position. This has a pneumatic arm that I just push a button or a pedal and it comes out and we can slide this down and we want this close to the rim. So that's in position. And this kind of does all the guesswork for you, you just push this button. And it's gonna pull it away from the rim and up a little bit so that it's not actually touching the rim. Then I'm gonna take some tire lube, which in some cases could be soapy water, and just lubricate the top of the tire. This is just gonna help removing it. Because it's higher has a tire pressure sensor in the valve, you wanna take in consideration where that is when you go to remove it. If we go to dismount the tire with the sensor in this location, it's gonna get crushed because this part of the tire is gonna rub right up against it when it tries to go below that lip and it'll crush the sensor and it'll break it. So if you have the sensor over near the dismounting head, like right there, or even underneath here, as long as you don't hit the sensor, when you pry this up its gonna go over here and then the sensor is open and the tire is under that lip over here. With the pry tool in position now I can rotate the table in a clockwise motion. And it's gonna remove the tire from the top lip. Our tire is loose on the bottom. We're gonna do the same for the bottom one. This is a little bit tricky, kind of got to lift the tire, and then do the same. There we go. Can push on this pedal, that releases the arm, and slide the tire right off.

So around the bead of the tire, we noticed there's a lot of corrosion. Now that has to be cleaned up afterwards. You wanna use a wire brush or even a die grinder and just clean it up. You wanna be careful not to dig into the wheel too much because you don't wanna distort the wheel. If you don't clean that up, you're gonna end up with tire leaks, just like this. This bead area is all cleaned up now. If we had bead sealer, we would wanna put some beads sealer on there. We don't actually have any, but most good tire shops are gonna put bead sealer on the rim. That'll prevent some of that corrosion in the future and make sure the tire is sealed properly.

We wanna make sure the tire size is the same as the tire that came off and check the tread. If the tread is a directional tire, you're gonna have to pay attention. If you're doing all four tires, you want two going one direction, two going the other. Now this tire actually has an inside. So we wanna put that going down inside. So we have a little blue stripe here. So we'll know for putting all the rest of the tires, the blue stripe is gonna be going up. Now take some tire lube, which can be a little bit of soapy water, lube up the bead real good. When installing the tire, we wanna pay attention to that valve again. And it's gonna be the opposite of removing it. We want the valve over on this side so that we don't crush that. Now with the tire like this, I can pull that arm back down, slide the tire right here. Just make sure my sensor's not getting hit. And rotate the rim. That's the first part. When I go to install the top part of the tire, if you're having some difficulty, this machine actually has an assistant over here that can help you. So you just take this. This just gonna hold the tire down. Adjust that. Just keep the tire under that lip. Make sure it goes under there. There it pops. Can go up. Move that out of the way.
We wanna set the bead. Now we're gonna hook up the air. Now there's still no valve core in there. Might be able to move the tire a little bit. There is some air escaping right here. Most tire machines when you hook up the air and you press on the pedal, if you push a little bit harder, there's jets that go at the bottom of the tire to help fill up the tire to see that bead. This tire machine doesn't have that. There's this external one. And then you can set the bead. Watch out when that pops, you don't wanna get your fingers near there. So this just forces a lot of air into the tire and that helps seat the bead. Once that has seated and underneath is seated, release the tire from the plate, I'm gonna fill up the tire. I can check the pressure, there is a gauge right here, and I have the valve core in the valve core remover, ready to put it in. Take that off, put the valve core back in, just snug it up and then adjust the pressure again. And that looks good. Take that off, put it aside, and we can put our cap back on.

Now we're gonna balance the tire. I wanna take that center cap out, just use the back of a screwdriver or pry bar, just pop it out. If you don't balance the tire, you're gonna end up with a vibration and you're gonna cause excessive tire wear prematurely. There's different cones that you can use to install this, to mount this to the balancer. Normally we would use a cone like this, but because this wheel is composite, I can't actually do that. There's actually a special adapter that you need for this type of wheel. The best that I can do here is we actually have a cup with a rubber ring on it and that's gonna go on the outside. It's not the best setup, but it's the best I can do. And then we'll have a cone. There's different cones that fit, and that's gonna center the wheel on the inside. Slide this cone on here, slide the cup on, just make sure the wheel is centered. It seems pretty good. Have to put the dimensions of the wheel and tire into the machine. So there's different measurement tools. Now I'm gonna use this tool to measure the width. Double-check to make sure you don't have any weights on here, should have taken those off before we took the tire off. But if you had sticky weights, maybe there's are sticky weights in there. And there's no weights on this, so we're good. Close the hood. So the machine is telling me that on the inner side, which we're gonna use hammer-on weights. We're gonna use 1 ounce and for the outer, which is actually sticky weights, we're gonna go on the inside of the rim and we're gonna do 2.75 ounces. With all the weights on now we're gonna re-spin it and make sure it doesn't tell us to put any other weights on. That's exactly what we're looking for. Now this tire's all set to mount back on the car.

So that's basically how the tires are installed on your vehicle. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to our channel, ring the bell, turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our videos.