Did my first DIY on the 996 this afternoon. I've only had the car two weeks but the headlights have not been coming on some of the time. I ordered the headlight switch from Suncoast and replaced it this afternoon. It took me about 1 hour including a trip to the store to buy a T20 screwdriver to fit the screw inside the switch. Looking forward to future DIYs. I also bought new tires this weekend - Michelin Pilot Super Sports.

 

Nice, now you have opened the door for more Porsche projects.

 

Nice first DIY. Now get a pair (3) of these for your 2nd DIY.
http://www.fasterusa.com/ecommerce/t...-michelin.html

 

I'd love to see you change a low profile car tire with those.

 

I did all 4 on my previous 996 with those. Dismounted and mounted. I did take them to have them balanced though. The 225, 265 and 285 18s are actually easier than many motorcycle tires that I hand mount all the time. Breaking the bead on a 30 aspect tire can be a challenge though.

 

I had 245/50-15 and 225/50-15 Hoosiers on the car in my avatar. Four of them, old off, new on, wore me out for the rest of the day. I would not try it on pretty rims. Only track rims, even with the plastic rim protectors by the irons you could slip and mark up a rim.
It makes the balloons on the ML350 like doing bicycle tires.

I did the Michelins on the 18s on my 2003 last year. Next time I'll pay someone.

I have a Harbor freight manual machine now.
http://www.harborfreight.com/portabl...ger-69686.html

With No-Mar long lever.
http://www.nomartirechanger.com/Sear...nt+demount+bar

 

I actually just went to Discount Tire - Didn't even consider mounting them myself. Perhaps next time.

 

Don't listen to us crusty old geezers, Discount tire is a better idea.

 

I have one of these (NoMar), but I only use it for the motorcycle.

 

Personally I wouldn't risk it trying to change tires yourself. at my shop we charge 28 for mount and balance, or 18 for just balance. To save the $40 per set and potentially damage them without having decent equipment is not worth it. Even at my shop we have a couple fairly decent tire changers, but for anything with low profile tires, Run on Flat tires, or new rims we have a special machine for them.

When we first opened the store we used a Coats 9024e machine.



We recently sold it an purchased this Corghi Master that is automated and completely touchless

 

Why didn't get one of these?

 

Three reasons actually

1) Price, Our Corghi cost us about $18,000 Canadian, the John Bean is $26,000 Canadian, so cost difference is about $4000 in savings

2) Support, We have an awesome Snap On rep for tools, he convinced us to look at a John Bean alignment machine. the Alignment machine is very good but reliability has been so so, and trying to get support from Snap-On/John Bean has not been a good experience at all. Where as with our Corghi / Coats dealer he is in our shop once a week topping up or wheel weight, lube, patch and other consumables supply. If we have any problems with equipment they are there same day to try and assess or fix it. Waiting for a week before someone even comes to look at your equipment can kill a shop, thankfully when we were in this situation with our alignment rack, we have a secondary setup in our shop.

3) Corghi has always been the innovator is tire tools. they were the first when it came to touchless technology with their first Master series. After demo'ing both units the corghi felt better built with less unneeded features that may go wrong. The John Bean is very hard to change out of it's completely automated role and give it manual input, there also seems to be more things that can go wrong with it.

On paper the John Bean machine is the better machine, but after demoing and factoring in the service, support, and price, the Corghi was the best machine for our shop, and with the savings we are also picking up a Coats Proguard leverless as a backup and total cost is not much more than the John Bean

If I was to go really ballin I would go with the Corghi Master Code that was there to Demo, but not yet purchase, way nicer than the John Bean