Anybody else do their own tyre fitting?

I bought a manual tyre changer years ago and have used it on trailer wheels and race car wheels but nothing as large and easily damaged as the Yeti wheels.

After 55k miles on the tyres that were on it when I bought the car it was time to change them, as the Kumhos had done so well I replaced them with exactly the same tyre still being made although in Hungary now and not Malaysia.

Knowing that using the long yet ineffective tyre lever would damage the alloy rims I fabricated a conversion kit to allow the use of a "duckbill head" from a garage tyre machine following the example of a Youtube video and it made a big difference.

The steel sections available to me were not thick walled and as a consequence there is some deflection, it works very well fitting the tyres but removal is a bit more of a challenge, in both cases by the 4th rim I had worked out how to do it but will have forgotten the next time, by far the hardest part was breaking the beads especially on the inside rim which does not have a well beside it just a lip and then slowly tapering down to the well for the outside rim, I definitely will not be using the beadbreaker on the machine again and will buy one of the screw operated ones sold by Vevor as my next investment, maybe a balancer as well but we will see if there is any imbalance in these tyres first, - another thread.

All in all very hard physical work, a lot of time spent but very satisfying, I used to change car tyres on the floor using tyre levers, not only am I no longer up for that but modern rim sizes, and mine were relatively small at 16" would be impossible without a waist level machine, a duckbill head and lots of leverage.

I did not have any tyre lube so improvised, I used duck fat from Confit de Canard!!! Once cooked and eaten you are left with a large tin half full of very clear solid at room temperature fat like Tallow but creamier, perfect for the workshop!