runwyrlph wrote on 06/21/11 at 09:33:49:i vote for DIY.
it's a bit of a pain, i admit, but after a couple of times it's pretty easy.
To break the bead, put a piece of plywood or several peices of cardboard on the ground under your car's bumper, put wheel on plywood, foot of jack just against the rim, and jack up the car.
i spent $10-15 on a set of tire irons when i had to change the first one, that was a good investment - with a little care you can avoid pinching the tube
best thing about DIY - IMHO - is you can do the change when it fits your schedule- be it 6 AM or 11PM.
I hear ya. If it's not too much I'll probably just have a shop do it. I've never been the one in the family who was into that stuff. My father (RIP) was a certified mechanic from Cars, bikes, boats and everything inbetween. My older brother followed in his footsteps and became a great car/truck mechanic. My younger brother did the same but is more into dirtbikes, motorcycles and small engines.
I'm the oddball that was fascinated with computers and music. In the 90s when the brothers were learning to wrench out in the driveway, I was practicing different positions of the pentatonic scale, modes of the major, and learning my favorite Metallica tunes. When I wasn't doing that I was messing with HTML and pirating anything and everything.
Funny though, from just being in this family I probably know more about cars than most backyard mechanics. I love muscle and horsepower, just don't care to get dirty cursing at a motor.
But it works out. I need help on a car or bike and I can call my brothers. Everytime they have a PC issue they call me.
Actually, just lastnight I had my brother put my exhaust back on. I found out due to the really dry and hot conditions in Idaho, it's required to run a muffler because of the fire risk. He's getting pretty tired of working on my bike and thats why I'm hesitant to ask him to do all this work. But soon after I left he calls me and tells me his PC is shutting down before it gets to Windows. I ask him what he did. He explains his CPU heatsink was clogged up with dust and he didn't have compressed air so he took the heatsink off, washed it and put it back on. I then explained to him the importance of thermal conductive paste and that now it's just metal to metal the cpu is heating up super fast and the motherboard is shutting it down to protect it. He admits that yes, he cleaned off some sort of "paste" and felt a bit silly about it after.
Just goes to show, we're all good at some things, but other things should be left to someone who knows.
Pages: 1 
