For those of you who change your own tires and have an off-the-shelf stand for the purpose that uses a center post for leverage, this is a shout-out for a piece of gear that might save you a bunch of effort and make your equipment go further. I am not sponsored and spent my own money on everything mentioned, and learned what I'm sharing here through experience.
Background: Over the last year I've been working as an independent mobile motorcycle mechanic, and my most common request is tire changes. I started up doing this because I bought a fairly old Cycle Hill tire changer, which wasn't cheap despite the age, and wanted to make it pay for itself. I've changed well over 100 motorcycle tires in the last year. The limitations of the Cycle Hill, No-Mar's base model tire changer, became apparent pretty quick, and I also learned the hard way why subsequent editions of it have been changed to be stronger. It has very noodly clamping arms made of box-section steel with far too thin walls and when really levering on a wheel to either remove or install a tire the wheel will sometimes rotate inside the clamps, which results in the tire going nowhere. Later models have much bigger arms (soon I'm going to fabricate new arms for mine). Experience made me better at dealing with its shortcomings, but it's simply not beefy enough for heavy cruiser tires.
Until yesterday, that is.
No-Mar's patented Mount/Demount bar has a few problems they don't tell you about when selling you their changers. The biggest are related to the mounting end. Granted, mine is the older design with blue powdercoat rather than the gray/white one that I've attached a picture of, but the fundamental design of the mount and demount ends has not changed since mine got made.
The short list from worst to least:
Yesterday I levered on a pair of Harley-Davidson tires that were taken off a Street Glide, using the same noodly stand and the Mojolever. It made the installation step actually possible with reinforced heavy cruiser tires and the amount of effort was less than the typical for most tires. I'm massively impressed and this tool is going to make my life a whole lot easier as I should be using the tire spoons a whole lot less.
The Mojolever is, in my opinion and direct experience, a superior design for installing tires and I am going to get a ton of use out of mine.
If you're interested, you can pick one up here: https://www.mojotiretools.com/mojoweb.htm
Background: Over the last year I've been working as an independent mobile motorcycle mechanic, and my most common request is tire changes. I started up doing this because I bought a fairly old Cycle Hill tire changer, which wasn't cheap despite the age, and wanted to make it pay for itself. I've changed well over 100 motorcycle tires in the last year. The limitations of the Cycle Hill, No-Mar's base model tire changer, became apparent pretty quick, and I also learned the hard way why subsequent editions of it have been changed to be stronger. It has very noodly clamping arms made of box-section steel with far too thin walls and when really levering on a wheel to either remove or install a tire the wheel will sometimes rotate inside the clamps, which results in the tire going nowhere. Later models have much bigger arms (soon I'm going to fabricate new arms for mine). Experience made me better at dealing with its shortcomings, but it's simply not beefy enough for heavy cruiser tires.
Until yesterday, that is.
No-Mar's patented Mount/Demount bar has a few problems they don't tell you about when selling you their changers. The biggest are related to the mounting end. Granted, mine is the older design with blue powdercoat rather than the gray/white one that I've attached a picture of, but the fundamental design of the mount and demount ends has not changed since mine got made.
The short list from worst to least:
- The mount end requires quite a lot of bead slack from the tire when installing -- its two nubs push the bead of the tire fairly far away from the rim in order to slip it over. This is bad enough that with any Harley-Davidson tire and this changer, I gave up entirely on using the mount end and simply resorted to using tire spoons as it would reliably require too much force and make the wheel rotate in its clamps. The rear Dunlop D404 I put onto my own 1980 CB750 was one of the tires that simply refused to be installed the "correct" way. Also, a lot of modern sportbikes don't have deep drop centers in their wheels in order to save on weight, which means I simply couldn't get enough bead slack at all and would again have to resort to the spoons.
- The mount end's two-nubs design requires that you hold the angled handle in order to keep it from rotating and jumping off the wheel.
- The demount end is fairly fragile and No-Mar basically considers them disposable. Particularly stiff tires, especially old ones, won't allow it to be used correctly and can end up breaking even if you attempt the proper technique. The plastic is surprisingly soft and develops lots of gashes and creases with use. The demount end is also a significant pain in the ass to replace when it breaks, with the Official Instructions saying you're supposed to clamp a set of vise-grips on it and smack them with a hammer to remove it. It is not fun and took me a good 30 minutes of beating and frustration to replace the first one I broke.
- My lever bar got bent when trying to demount a particularly stiff rear tire from a Victory Cross-Country, a very heavy touring bike. Not just the ends, mind you, the actual steel of the bar. So the tube section is thin-walled just like the Cycle Hill's arms.
- The mount end of the Mojolever is very thin and stretches the bead of the tire maybe 1/4 of an inch over the outside of the rim, less than half of the No-Mar's mount end by my guess. This makes for a massive reduction in felt effort and torque applied to the wheel and stand.
- The Mojolever's mount end is a flat plate and pushing on the lever during a tire install imparts no rotational force on it. Having an extra hand free was very convenient while I pushed it around the wheel with my hip.
- The demount end of the Mojolever is thicker and the plastic chosen is nylon, not UHMWHDPE. (Yes that's a real acronym.) While this did result in more effort when demounting a tire I didn't feel like I was about to break it at any point, which usually happens with the No-Mar.
- The Mojolever is built like a tank compared to the No-Mar. Definitely heavier and thicker steel. It's made of square-section tubing so it's more rigid in the directions that count.
Yesterday I levered on a pair of Harley-Davidson tires that were taken off a Street Glide, using the same noodly stand and the Mojolever. It made the installation step actually possible with reinforced heavy cruiser tires and the amount of effort was less than the typical for most tires. I'm massively impressed and this tool is going to make my life a whole lot easier as I should be using the tire spoons a whole lot less.
The Mojolever is, in my opinion and direct experience, a superior design for installing tires and I am going to get a ton of use out of mine.
If you're interested, you can pick one up here: https://www.mojotiretools.com/mojoweb.htm
