Custom Tire Installation

Rick Robinson: Hi! I'm Rick Robinson with Springfield Motorsport. And we're here today to talk about selecting custom wheels and tires for your car. In this segment, we're going to cover the installation process. Here we have our brand new Carroll Shelby wheels, it's important when if you've these shipped to you, that you check them carefully when you get them. I want to make sure there is no damage to the box. Take the wheel out, and over the wheel particularly the edges of the wheels, pull that off and make sure that the edge of the rims are all in good shape and there is no dangerous scratches.

After the tire installation process, this is the machine that does all the work. Couple of important things to consider when selecting the right shop to install your tires on your new custom wheels, is if they're going to take good care of those expensive new wheels. On our machine, we use these plastic guards on the clamps that hold the wheel in place, it grips the inside of the wheel and protects the edge of the rim from any damage, when we're installing the tire.

If you'll notice the teeth on the back side of this one. These are commonly used by your everyday tire shops, they grip the inside of the rim. But you never ever you use this on a set of aluminum custom wheels because it'll chew up the inside of your rim. This is the head unit, this does all the heavy labor. This is what actually puts the tire on the wheel and takes it off. You'll notice the protective Teflon liner on the inside of the head unit here, that again protects the edge of your rim from any scratches or damage, during the installation of the tire.

Okay, so we'll start by putting the wheel on the machine, and next we'll install the valve stand. Whenever you get new tires on your wheels, always have been change the valve stand. Make sure that you don't get a leak there. What he's checking now is the direction of the tire, many of the today's performance tires are directional. You're going to make sure that you get it on the rim correctly for the side of the car that you're going to put it on. He's going to loop up the bead real good, so that it's slides over the rim smoothly and on the wheel it goes.

Large low aspect tires like this, often take a lot of manipulation that get him on the rim correctly. And here's where an experienced tire shop becomes important. Now we're gong to inflate the tire to lock the bead in place. You hear the bead pop in place. I want to inflate it with the proper pressure and it's ready to balance, don't forget your valve cap. Okay, now it's time to balance our wheels to make sure they perform well on our car. When having this done, make sure that you specify to your installer, what type of balance weights do you want him to use on the wheel?

I'm showing you three different types here today. This one is the old style knock-on weights we call them, long used on the old steel wheels, they're hammered on to the edge of the wheel. Obviously not something you want to do on a new custom aluminum wheel, it'll chew up edge of the wheel. it's not going to look good out there on the outside of your tire. This is the newer type of weight. It has an adhesive backing on it. We stick it on the inside of the wheel, so that it's not visible from the outside of the car and doesn't damage the wheel.

Now a new type of full weight that's just recently come out is called exact balance. Instead of being a solid led weight it actually a vital tube, it gives you a better dynamic balance of the wheel as the shaft moves around inside the tube, during rotation. Now we have our new wheel and tire mounted up on a balancing machine, and we got check it to see how much weight is required to balance this wheel and where it needs to be on the wheell.

So let's give it a spin. You'll notice the arrows on the display will tell me exactly where that weight needs to be. It needs to be right there at that point on the wheel, and this one only requires a quarter of an ounce which is pretty good for a wheel and tire of this size. So now, I'm going to install the weights on this wheel, give it one more spin to check it. Then we'll move to the car and show you how to install it on your car.