Iset offto buy a new set of tires today as a local farm n barn storewas giving$100 gift cardswith a set of Cooper A/T tires (thatwere already discounted).Not really wanting to go with these Coopers (a little more aggressive than I was looking for), ..for the heck of it I called Firestone to see if they had anything on sale. Theyhad a set of Destination LE's on sale which I saw at another shop and liked. They seem like they will give a nice on road smooth ride. The Firestone price was stillquite a bit higher than the deal I was looking at. Well,I happened tohave gotten the store Mgr., he must have realized I wasnt interested in his price andasked me if I had my eye on any other tires. I told him about the deal I was thinkng about. Long story short he asked if he could match the deal I was looking at and he worked about $85 off the original sale price he shot me. That was within a few bucks of the $100 gift card deal, plus the tire I really wanted.

I took the tires in (I took off vehicle to clean and also make sure I could re-install myself, plus I need to do some brake work). To cut to the chase, it took over 2 1/2 hours of VERY HARD work, and the participation ofalmost all 10 guys working in the shopto get the Michelins off.No kidding! They explained that they see this quite a bit with Michelins. They have a soft sidewall and as the tire machine bead breaker arm clamps down to break the bead, it rolls the sidewall over, but the bead stays put. That spits the tire out. I was right there in the mix as I've done my share of tire work in my years. The trick that seemed to work was toattempt to break the bead and rotatethe rim, hosing a little soapy water on the bead each time. After about 2 times around, it seemed to break free. Now mind you, these are very nice rims off a CA vehicle that are not corroded in any way. The last wheel was the toughest. I bet we worked for an hourtrying to gettheback beadto break free. These newer tire machines with the floor level bead breaker don't clamp the wheel like the old ones did. If they would have had a Coats 4040 or one that holds the wheel put during the bead breaking process, it would have done the trick really easily.

So two guys would be working on it, one guy would get frustrated and about that time another worker would call him awuss and come in to take over ..then he would have his go. Then the next guy would give it a try. They'd go over and try it on the other machine, etc. There were always two guys on it. One guy would hold the tireagainst the machineas hard as he could, his body almost parallel with the ground as he was wedged himslef between a heavy cabinet and the tire with all his might! Still couldn't hold it tight to the bead breaking arm. Well, anyway,it finally broke loose. I felt bad that it took so much time.The Mgr was also helping out.Ultimately, hehandled it well and joked about it at the end, not getting mad like some tire guys might that he spent a ton of time on a low/no margin sale. He said the only other set that was harder to do was a BMW they did a few months earlier.

Have any of you had this happen to you?

 

ive never had issues with mounting/dismounting tires on the rovers but i see the frustration you talk about when the m3 needs new tires lol

 

lol ya, there is NOTHING easy about working on a BMW.