Changing Tires the "Old School" Way

[Dime Dave]

Well I was going to go into detail on Skib’s Wagon build page about my Father/Son lesson on how to "Break Down the Tire Bead” but I decided it needed a place of its own.

 

Skib at least you had a changing stand to use. :lol:

 

When I was a number of years younger, my Dad (who turns 79 today) showed me how to dismount/mount tires without a changer of any type. He's been a gearhead all his life. As a teenager he would scavenge old Ford Model A parts and build "cars" out of them, so to say his tire changing technique is "old school" would be kind.

 

To change a tire the first thing you need to do is break down the tire bead from the rim. His technique to do this was to apply weight to the side wall of the tire until tire bead released from the rim. This could be as simple as taking a tire spoon (basically a round bar with one end flattened out into an oval), jamming the ovaled end under the rim edge and prying down on the tire to get the bead released from the rim.

 

Now you have to remember that in my Dad’s day few wheels had safety beads. Today, nobody talks about “safety beads” because all rims have them. The safety bead is the bump on the rim that when mounting the tire causes the bead to “pop” when seating the tire on the rim. So being that this new fangled “safety bead” wasn’t around in my Dad’s early days, using a tire spoon to “break the bead” on an old wheel wasn’t uncommon.

 

Now if the tire bead is stuck from age or the wheel has a safety bead more force than leaning on a tire spoon is needed to break the bead loose. What you did was take the wheel and tire with the valve core removed and lay it on its side in the driveway (or any flat, hard, surface accessible by a vehicle). Next you took a vehicle, the bigger the better, and literally drove the front wheel of the vehicle onto the tire portion of the wheel/tire you wanted to separate. Now you had some weight trying to pull the tire off the bead. If you were lucky it would break loose as you drove onto the tire. If it was a safety bead wheel it was a 50/50 shot of it breaking loose on the first attempt.

 

If it was a well weathered tire usually it took extra effort to break the bead loose and you could find yourself driving back and forth over the tire several times. With each pass you’d keep turning at the steering wheel to keep vehicle’s tire as close as you could to the bead of the wheel on the ground. The goal was to try and “steer” around the bead of the wheel on the ground. With all this steering input and back/forth motion going on, the tire/wheel you are trying to break apart would usually start lifting on the outside edge. You’d have to enlist a buddy to stand with both feet on the outside edge of the tire to keep it flat on the ground as you continued driving back and forth over it. By keeping the driven vehicle’s wheel as close to the bead as you could this technique never failed to break the bead loose. It may have taken some effort and perseverance but it always worked. As an added note, all this was usually done “in the day” with a standard shift truck with no power steering which added to the excitement.

 

Now once the bead was loose on that side, you flipped the wheel/tire over and started all over again on the back side. If you were lucky, that new fangled safety bead was only on one side of the wheel. Yup, some used to be only one sided. They didn’t figure you needed it on both sides, after all President Ike had only just started building the Interstate Highway system and you simply didn’t drive fast enough to need a double safety bead. And if it had a nasty , weathered safety bead on the backside as well , you had to go thru all the same motions as you did on the front side, all the while watching your buddy dance around on top of a gyrating wheel with his white knuckles grabbing at your front fender the whole time. Now that was good stuff! :thumbup:

Edited October 29, 2009 by Dime Dave

[hang_510]

isnt this where the idea of some ignited flammable liquid to seat the new tire came into fashion? :lol:

[LAYEDOUTB2K]

That's pretty interesting. I've never heard of it done that way. I've had to change a set of slicks by hand at the racetrack but we broke the bead with 4 people jumping on the tire at the same time.

[Dime Dave]

The "Flaming Tire Mount

[Dime Dave]

Old ether, there finally it goes.

http://tinyurl.com/2a8kzb

 

Oh, some is good, let

[datzenmike]

Good stuff. My wife bought me a set of 12.5X33X15s and I had them mounted and ballanced but before that I ran anything I could scavange and mounted at least three complete sets of tires this way including some 31.5s. I let all the air out and removed the valve and lay it in the driveway. Placed a 2X10 plank on the sidewall and drove her fat assed Dodge up the ramp towards the rim. I had my son stand on the rim as it would try to lift up on the far side. Always worked with enough tries. Almost forgot, I did a set of GM rims for my son when he started driving.

[nukeday]

Wish I would have know about this when I was younger. I used a rim from a motorhome, I think it was 19", set it over the tire and me and a couple of friends would jump on it until the bead came loose.

 

I'm sure we looked like idiots in our little ring-around-the-rosy group hug, popping up and down. It worked though.

 

I slid a chain around a crosswise 2x4 through the center hole and wrapped the chain around a tree when I 'ethered'.

Edited October 29, 2009 by nukeday

[Dime Dave]

Nukeday wrote:

 

I'm sure we looked like idiots in our little ring-around-the-rosy group hug, popping up and down.

 

Dude,

That is a classic! And the vissual !!!!!! ROTFLMAO :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

 

Goes to prove the stuff that flys off fingers and lands on the internet isn't all just "cyberspace boogers"

[ronnny]

Been there and changed lots of tires off by hand. saw uncles break the bead then you try other to get your own way that seems easier to you. Never tried the lighter fluid trick myself although i could use it at times. Changed from 35x12.5r15 to 31x10.5 on 15 and 14 wheels on datsuns. The little 14" wheels seem to be the hardest with the 35's on a proper wheel is the easiest. the hardest to seat a bead was 12.5 wide 33's on a 12" wide wheel. Not i got a manual tire changer from northern tool. best 80 bucks ever spent.

 

put my car ramp next to the wheel and drive up on it to break the bead i found works best.

[Madness]

I've mounted a few by hand myself.

 

 

usually you can use a bottle jack and the axle on a pickup to break the bead. Just put the bottle jack as close to the wheel as you can and sit on the other side. Worked for me every time. If you're suck on a 4 wheeling trail you can get crafty with a Hi-Lift jack and someones hitch.

 

As for seating the bead I've seen and have used several methods from a ratchet strap, come along, and gasoline on a rag..... seriously it worked. :blink:

Just make sure you have the valve core out when you use the "explosives" trick. The burning creates a vacuum and will pull the bead right back off the rim and if you catch it at the right time you might be able to get 5 psi out of it.

 

 

There have been some creative techniques used on the wheeling trails. :lol:

 

 

Edit: when patching a tire from the inside light the glue on fire for a couple of seconds, it makes it really sticky really fast.... the guys at discount tire (when i worked there) didn't like that trick too much.

Edited October 30, 2009 by Madness