Bead breakers

[Bob Hancock]

Hi guys,
Back in June we had a big discussion about changing the tires yourself and breaking beads. Well...since then I've built a static balancer that looks/works like the one I saw the Michelin man use at Road Atlanta. Then I went to http://www.ibmwr.org/ and looked in their Other Tech Articles section and tried one of the simplest of suggestions to break the bead. Basically it involves your wheel/tire laying on two 4x4's to keep the brake rotor off the ground. Put this under a verticle piece of 2x4 that is leveraged down with a longer 2x4 that has one end held down by the work bench. Break the bead, turn 90 deg, break it there, turn, etc. About 1 minute on each side. Two minutes total.
I got the rim protectors from Competition Accessories, the tire irons and weights from Aerostich and have changed two sets of my tires and two for a friend.
Piece of cake...and I beat my rims up less than the Beemer dealer does with his fine machine worked by the mech who wants to go to lunch. Hope the bead breaker explanation is understandable.
FWIW.
Bob