jegarh, I think you might be surprised at how many riders actually do their own tire fitting & balancing, but just don't make such a big deal out of it. Sure, there are a lot who try to get their Dealer or a local tire fitter to do it for them, lots of Spyder Ryders have done their time doing all that stuff themselves & now enjoy the privilege of being able to get someone else to do it for them; but then there are a whole lot of Spyder & other 'bike riders out there!! So even if you only see those posting who go public about their search for someone to strip & fit tires, there are still tens of thousands who haven't gone public, & I suspect a fair proportion of those, especially amongst those from the more 'do it yourself' generations, still do most of their minor work themselves, including the stripping & fitting of their tires.
I generally do
most of my own & a few friends vehicle maintenance, including tire stripping, fitting, & balancing; pretty much looking after a few cars, a couple of motorcycles, and a bunch of heavier vehicles; but despite being retired from the work-force for some years now, I also help train tire fitters, repairers, balancers, & alignment technicians in 'non-computerised' or 'non-machine' based operations in those various fields for a few of the local Tire Outlets. So to that end I often use my own 'less common' tire fitting tasks as exercises or demo's for those tech's who would otherwise never get to see or do what most of us who've been around for a while might consider as a basic tire maintenance task - it's amazing how many current 'trained & qualified' technicians have no idea about how to safely use tire levers (or spoons); set a bead; how to use one of those 'bubble' type spirit level balancers; or how to do anything to fix a puncture but use an externally applied 'dog turd' type puncture repair (for many, anything they can't repair from outside the tire is a throw-away!) They got trained & qualified mainly on the machines, so if it's not something that they can get their machine to do or it involves a tire/rim combo that just won't physically fit readily onto their machine, then as far as they are concerned it's simply impossible to do!! :shocked:
That said, most of the techs I get to see are quite skilled & capable at what they are expected to know as part of their jobs &/or by the various 'schools' they graduate from, and this old hat 'man-draulic' stuff is pretty much just 'the theory of ancient history' to them! It's only when someone actually goes thru the motions & shows them the why's & wherefore's of doing stuff without mechanical assistance from their new-fangled Hi-Teckery devices that the smart operators amongst them quickly learn & apply that to doing their job better!! Then there's those who just don't care at all...... & there seems to be a lot of them!! :sour:
