Can anyone give me some tips or info. about changing atv tires? Is it easy? Does it require any special tools?

Spanky500
01' scram 500 4x4
98' yz 250

 

NO, it is not easy. YES you will need something to break the bead. The best thing to do is invest in a bead breaker. Then you wont have the hassle of begging a tire shop to break the tires down for you (most wont, or say they cant).

To put the new tires on yourself is not to bad. With the tire laying on the floor, Coat the bead of the tire with DAWN dish washing liquid, hold the rim at an angle and twist it into the tire. This could take some force. Next flip the assembley over, smear some DAWN around the bead of the WHEEL and TIRE, push one side of the tire down past the bead of the wheel with your knee or foot. Then using two large flat head screwdrivers, work the rest of the tire down into the wheel. Finally, take the valve out of the valve stem and fill tire with air until bead pops on both sides, it should be LOUD and may take several trys.

 

Go to discount Tire and they mount for $10.

 

We use the front tires on a 1 ton Dodge diesel to bread the beads. Just keep runnin over the atv tire next to the rim, it will breakem down!!

 

I also use the run over it with the truck method. Just put the wheel on something solid and run the vehicles tire right up against the ATV tires wheel. You may have to keep turning the wheel to finally get it off. Go buy a couple of tire irons, the ones that are about 18" long I have found work the best. This is probably going to be confusing but see which side of the wheel tapers to the smallest diameter the quickest and put that side facing up and remove the old tire. Leave the wheel facing the same direction and install new tire like the previous post says. Be careful when airing up the new tire to seat it on the bead, lube it up good and look on the side wall to see what the max. inflation pressure is. If it won't seat at this pressure try bouncing the tire or hitting sidewall with a hammer. Once you get it mastered you can change 4 tires in a couple of hours.

 

Any service station that does tires can do this. If they say they can't they are full of Sh@t! My brother owns a shop and I use his bead breaker to do them for me and friends it takes only about 2 minutes a tire.

 

Its not difficult to do it yourself. For the rear tires, place a short 2x4 on the bead as close to the rim as possible, making a ramp. Drive onto the board with a car/truck. You may have to rotate the tires a couple times to fully break the bead. For the fronts just drive onto the tire with car/truck getting as close to rim as possible. And then of course you will need a couple of pry bars to do the rest. Lube up the new ones pretty good and they will slide on by hand. I have done it this way many times, it only takes a few minutes and I've never damaged a tire or wheel. Good Luck [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]