You can fit your own motorcycle tyres, in the same way you can cut your own hair, make your own tomato ketchup or plumb your own bathroom.
It is all possible but sometimes it’s best to leave it to someone who has the right tools to do it, knows how to do it right – and how to rescue it if it goes wrong.
How to fit your own motorcycle tyres at home
There are just 16 steps to happiness in guide to fitting your own tyres at home.
1 – Hope you haven’t got to fit adventure motorcycle tyres as they have a ridiculously strong bead and you’ll probably end up flipping a tyre lever into your chin.
2 – Have a quick Google for decent motorcycle wheel painters if you’re fitting a 190 or 200-section tyre to your delicate superbike rim. Sometimes it feels like the bike manufacturers design these rims to scratch like an utter bastard at just the sight of a tyre lever.
3 – Develop a third knee to give you that extra leverage on the tyre to help get it off the rim for stages 5 and 6. Don’t have a third knee? The wife is a good second option and she’ll absolutely love to be a part of this.
4 – £10 for a piece of plastic? That’s daylight robbery. Save even more money by not using proper rim protectors. Instead use an old floppy disk, a piece of carpet or perhaps an oily garage rag to protect your rims from the tyre lever you’re about to bend against them.
5 – Put a square of carpet on the floor as it’s a guaranteed way to ensure you don’t damage the discs that you should have taken off but couldn’t be bothered to. New discs are only about £200 each, so, you know, whatever.
6 – Break the bead on the tyre. You could buy a manual bead breaker for about £50 – they’re an absolutely excellent thing to have to move around the garage 8 times a year.
7 – Don’t worry about tyre levers, just use a long flat-head screwdriver like that forum guru told you to. Or you could buy some top-rated tyre levers from Amazon with 700 5-star ‘verified’ reviews. Then watch them bend, as they display the torsional rigidity of a disposable toothbrush.
8 – Push on when you realise you just dinked one of the brake discs you couldn’t be bothered to remove.
9 – Watch that YouTube tyre changing video a 6th time.
10 – Nearly chop your finger off as the tyre lever pings out of the rim at the point of you getting the tyre over the lip. But count yourself lucky all you did was make a 1-inch scratch on the rim instead.
11 – With the bead broken and one side of the tyre off the rim, use a rubber mallet to bash the tyre off the other side of the rim. Don’t worry if you don’t have a mallet, just use a block of wood or a club hammer or the back of a drill. Don’t worry about the occasional strike to the rim, it probably won’t have damaged it too badly.
12 – Use tyre soap on the new tyre bead to help it slide onto the rim. No tyre soap? Fairy liquid is great and probably won’t corrode your rim too badly over time.
13 – Line the dot on the side of the tyre up with the valve to help set the tyre up so it requires minimal balancing. Which dot you ask? Just choose one, there are loads of different markings on each tyre and one of them’s bound to be right.
13 – Lever the tyre on. It’s that easy. Consult step 2 if you’re struggling.
14 – Once the tyre’s on, inflate it with the valve core out. You did rememeber to replace the valve, didn’t you? The tyre will pop and bang as it seats on the rim. If you aren’t using a compressor to inflate the tyre the air will just seep out faster than you can force it in, so you’ll be there a while, developing a Popeye-like bicep.
15 – Now the tyre’s on, it’s not a good time to check whether you fitted it to rotate in the right direction, so just don’t worry about it.
16 – Balance your wheel. You’ll need a £90 wheel balancer but that bloke on the forum said wheel balancing is for wooftas and he’s been doing his own tyres for years.
Job done. That’s £25 saved isn’t it?
So yes, you can save money fitting motorcycle tyres yourself but you also have to account for the equipment you’ll need not to mention the cost of repairing any damage you cause to your own rims if you get it wrong.
I’m really not trying to drum up more business here. I just think that – like making your own tomato ketchup – you have to ask yourself: is this the best use of my time?
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