Anyone attempt wheel installation/balancing/alignment themselves?

Digbicks1234

16.5 CX-5 Touring/2023 CX-9 Touring
Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone has tried to install a new set of tires onto their rims and did the alignment/balancing process with tools from Harbor Freight or using other tools?

Was wondering if it would be feasible to DIY rather than bringing it into a tire shop. It's almost $200 to bring it into the a shop for the whole process so I'm thinking if this would be a good skill to learn and the tools pay off in the long run.

Examples:
Portable Wheel Balancer
Manual Tire Changer
https://www.amazon.com/dp/ (commissions earned)
 
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I have not done the CX5 but have done alignment on my Corvette myself. I used cord stretched over the center of the tire to the front and rear of the car to an exact cord square to the car that I set up. I calculated and measured the toe at the tire/wheel and set it to speck. Also did the chamfer with a weighted plumb cord from top to bottom of center of the wheels. It improved handling and tires wear evenly. Corvette has directional tread and larger tires on rear so can not be rotated without removing from rim and then only side to side. You need toe and chamfer speck for front and rear wheels then calculate degrees to distance at tire measurement size. I think there are some articles published and u-tubes. Unless you have uneven wear, do not rotate tires or have handling issues I would not waste my time unless you love to work on it...

I have also done tire balancing by spinning tires on jacked up rear tires (two wheel drive) by trial and error with some success but I would not recommend it (with an open deferential the tire spins twice the speedometer if the other rear tire is stationary)...

In the old days I have changed tires with a couple of tire tools and a hammer but it is a lot of dirty hard work.

Early tire balancing was done by placing the wheel on a center point pivot and placing weights until the tire was balanced on the center point. This helps to get started but centrifugal balance is different from static balance so it still required the spin balance for good final results.
 
I could see DIY tire mount/balance if your running soft sport tires that you are changing frequently or if you just like to do things yourself. Other than that, too much trouble and cost of equipment for tires that last 50-80k miles. (IMHO). Same with alignment. How often do you need an alignment?

Some of the super sticky motorcycle tires I would use up in 1500 miles. DIY on those was both time and money saving.
 
Thread resurrection!

A friend from another forum posted this when I said I didn't believe he could change a tire without a machine: Fat @$$ changes a tyre Shortly after, I made my own lever type bead breaker (a bumper jack also works if you have one, plus of course something to hold it down) and bought two tire levers and a 4# deadblow hammer at Harbor Freight. Turns out mounting is way easier than dismounting, and tire dressing makes an OK bead lube. I do suggest reading about match mounting and trying to measure radial tire and rim runout the best you can.

I still haven't tried balancing at home, though this looks incredibly nifty: How wheel balancing was done in the 1960´s

As for alignment checks, I have a Fastrax camber/caster/toe gauge: https://www.spcalignment.com/instructions/91000-INS_WEB.pdf It lets you easily compensate for sloped pavement (I lay a long straightedge on mine since it's very uneven) by adjusting the level bit up or down. I sometimes have to employ penetrant, heat, and pipe wrenches in addition to large-size metric wrenches to make adjustments successfully, and a reliable assistant doesn't hurt. I did just last week install adjustable rear UCAs and start slotting strut-tower bolt holes for actual camber adjustment.

Today I'm planning to set up the system with two pieces of twine parallel to the rocker pinchwelds, in hopes that I can get good readings on rear toe/thrust angle.
 
Today I finally attempted a rear toe check since I was 99% sure my thrust angle was off after a LCA replacement on the Mazda IRS (and the act of removing/replacing the LCA educated me on how to actually adjust rear toe using the stock cam bolts!). I used pretty much the method described in Chassis Engineering by Herb Adams - I set twine up between two jackstands roughly parallel with the rockers on the horizontal plane, and measured from the jacking points on the pinchwelds to make the twine parallel with the car on the vertical plane. I did this on the driver's side and set the left rear wheel to 1/16" toed in, then measured between the wheels to set the total toe to 1/8" inward. Turns out it was very easy to see and measure the motion as I made the adjustments. When I checked with twine on the passenger side, I found that wheel toed in 1/16", so from what I'm able to tell the method checks out, and the thrust angle is zero or nearly so. Obviously, if the total toe were different than the sum of the individual toes, I would know something was off with my measurements.
 
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