This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Tire Changes
Dec
19
2018
I decided to have winter/snow tires for the minivan this year. They’re like insurance – you probably won’t need them, but if you do need them you must already have them installed.
To make life easier, I wanted dedicated rims for the tires. I have no problem keeping a spare set of tires in the barn when they are not being used, and I didn’t want to pay twice a year to have winter tires swapped and unswapped off the one set of rims for the vehicle. I’d rather pay a little extra up front for another set of rims and then it’s all set.
Then I started looking at purchasing rims.
I couldn’t find anything less than $100 per rim. Add in about $100 per tire, and it was close to $1000 for winter tires on new rims.
Craigslist to the rescue.
It took longer than I expected, because our minivan uses an uncommon bolt pattern and it was hard to find any for sale. But eventually I did, and it was $50 per rim for unused or very lightly used rims. If I hadn’t found that listing on Craigslist, I would have gone to the junkyard the next weekend and found some who-knows-how-used rims, for a slightly cheaper price. The guy was selling them because the offset wasn’t correct for his vehicle. “His loss, my gain,” I thought to myself.
Now that I had the rims, I went shopping for tires. Again on Craigslist.
I found someone with a decent set of slightly used winter tires in the right size and took them home. He was selling his winter tires because he got new all-seasons for his Subaru and didn’t think he needed winter tires anymore. “His loss, my gain,” I thought to myself. And I also thought “All cars have 4-wheel stop; For most accidents, 4-wheel drive won’t help.”
This also happened to be $50 per tire, so I got a full setup for a bit less than half price of new.
I had not attempted mounting tires onto rims before, but I figured this would be a good time to learn. Especially since the minivan could keep running on its normal tires while I got the winter tires setup.
I started with one tire. I got one side on just fine by pushing on it hard. I could not get the other side over the lip though, so it was only half mounted.
I tried again a few days later. I tried a different tire this time. Same result. Took the tire off and tried the other side of the rim. Same result.
A few days later I bought a pry bar and rig meant to help with changing tires. Lots of effort, same result. Tried vice grips on the rim to keep the tire from popping up opposite of where I was prying it into the rim. Same result, except with more scuffing of the rim.
That’s when I started calling the tire shops. First place couldn’t give me a price until they saw the tires. “Maybe $25, maybe $30, hard to tell.” The next place simply said “$15 per tire” and I went with them. I pulled up to the shop, unloaded 4 half-mounted tires and rims from the back of the Jeep, and left them there. They were busy, so they called me later that day when they were done and I picked them up. It was $60 well spent, as I don’t know how long I would have wrestled with the tires on my own.
So the next free evening, I pulled the van into the barn and started putting the winter tires on it. I hadn’t checked the rims before getting the tires mounted, so this was the moment of truth. The studs fit the bolt pattern, so that was good. I tightened the lug nuts down and “why doesn’t the wheel spin anymore?” followed closely by “oh, that’s what he meant by the wrong offset”.
I turns out these were Jeep rims and the Jeep hubs stick out farther from the rotor so the rims are shallower, which means when I installed the wheels they pressed against the caliper bracket so much the wheels wouldn’t turn anymore.
Okay, no problem, I’ll go buy a spacer. The thin kind, because those are cheap and I don’t need much clearance.
I took another couple days to get to the store and try again. Alas, the store had only 2 spacers. So I bought them with the intent of buying the other 2 later. I ended up buying a set of 4 off Amazon, but I had a chance to install the first two before the remainder arrived, so I pulled the minivan back into the barn and started with the rear wheels.
Success! The spacer was thick enough for the rims to clear the brakes, but thin enough to allow the lug nuts to keep the rims on the hub.
A couple days later I had the other spacers and pulled the van back into the barn to swap the front tires. Same thing – not success but the rims did not clear the brakes. Even with the spacers. I had extra spacers, but that didn’t help because the lug studs were not long enough. It turns out the front rotors are thicker than the rears, so the brake assembly is slightly wider.
On to plan C – thicker wheel spacers with their own lug studs. I got 1″ thick spacers because the existing studs were just over an inch long and I could grind down the little bit that stuck out.
I browsed around Amazon until I found wheel spacers with the right bolt pattern, right thickness, and only a set of 2 so I wouldn’t spend that extra money on unneeded spacers.
I found them, but they were made for Jeeps so their lug studs are in real measurement units whereas the vans lugs are metric. So I ordered the wheel spacers then I had to order open-top lug nuts in metric so that I could hold the spacer in place. The open-top lug nuts that came with the spacer are now holding the wheel onto the spacer, and I put closed-top lug nuts on my Christmas list so that snow/mud/salt don’t corrode the spacers lug studs.
The spacers and lug nuts arrived, so I was finally able to try to swap the front wheels again.
I pulled the van into the barn and started the process. First thing I noticed though was a significant bulge in the side of the tire on the van. “No problem,” I thought, “since that’s the normal tire I can get that fixed while the van is running around on the winter tires.”
But then I noticed the back tire on the same side – a winter tire – also had a bulge. So I finished swapping out the fronts (one thing that finally worked in my favor is that the Jeep rims had hollow spots that lined up with the van’s lug studs so I didn’t have to do any grinding. The spacer did its job and the fronts finally fit) and then I had to unswap the rears (by taking off the winters and putting the normal wheels back on).
At the end of that day, the van still had two normal tires and two winter tires, it’s just the winters were on the front now instead of the rear.
On the plus side, the normal tire with the bulge had a warranty, so I was able to get that replaced at the shop cheaply.
On the minus side, Craigslist tires don’t come with a warranty so now I have to find someone selling only 2 winter tires of the correct size.
I think I may just buy a set of 4 because the potholes around here are not going away anytime soon.
The four wheels were underneath the borders, and the axles of the wheels were on the stand. And the height of a wheel was a cubit and a half.
1 Kings 7:32
December 19th, 2018 at 10:01 am
Good grief.
December 19th, 2018 at 2:45 pm
This sounds like every handy man job I’ve ever attempted.
Better you than me.