Been looking for a used rim clamp machine for my hobby shop. Mostly been looking at Coates machines because I'm familiar with them. I see this Hunter TC 3500 came up on Marketplace not far from me. Looked on Youtube and it seems this can do a variety of rim sizes and aspect ratios.It's air over hydraulic and no bead breaking shovel so I was wondering what has anyone with experience thinks. Not exactly why the seller wants to sell other than he has a cold shop this time year and would have to warm up the machine to demonstrate. My shop is heated.. I'm going tomorrow afternoon to get a lookj. The ask is 800 bux.

I have never used a TC3500 but have used many other Hunter machines including their Revolution and multiple alignment/balance and brake machines. Everything in our shop is Hunter. All are quality pieces made in the USA and backed by Hunter. Look at their website for support. Contact them to see if parts/accessories are available locally to you(likely yes). Industry leader for sure!

Look around here for videos that might help: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-MY-nAmjswCv68JDCPsiqw

Thanks for the response. Guess I will have to give it a look.

Hunter is a good quality but the no bead breaking shovel may be why he wants to get rid of it.

One of the hardest parts of tire changes is breaking the bead.

Do you have a viable process or does the machine break beads in a different method than the shovel on the side of the machine? (Rim Clamps are usually side shovel machines)

Just a thought.

They use rollers to break the bead...here's another video showing the process...around the 4 minute mark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItWWS8nfwgM

Got a message from the seller saying "hey, I got someone else wanting to look at it and he's offering 650. What do you want to do?" So I went and looked, asked him to break down a tire, then bought for $650. Got it home and broke down 2 more tires so I think I'm good. Now to research balancers.

Good buy!
I have been looking for a rim clamp machine also to change tires on my road race car.
Too bad your not closer I have a good test for your new machine. I have a dozen of these that 2 shops couldn't remove the tires.
Told me to find a shop with a newer style of rim clamp machine? Whatever that is?