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Posted by Jello Pudding on November 27, 2006, 8:49 am
Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> You didn't use enough soap and water on the bead. That's one of the
> secrets of mounting tires. If you use enough soap and water the bead will
> seat at 40psi or a little above. It's also a hell of a lot easier to get
> the tire on and off.
Using a low capacity coin-operated compressor, you cannot even trap 40
psi to seat the beads on some stiff carcass tires. I had to wrap the
cable of a coffin hoist around the circumference of one tire to get the
beads to make a seal that would hold enough air to make the bead begin
to cooperate.
I don't recommend using dishwashing soap. It's intentionally caustic
for cutting grease on dishes and pots and pans.
When you remove your soap-mounted tire to repair or replace it, you may
notice that the aluminum rim is grey and corroded, or even *pitted* by
the caustic soap and chromed spoke nipples will be rusty.
>
> The other big secret is where to put the tire irons on the tire while
> your going over the rim, when either coming on or coming off. There's
> a sweet spot where you put the second iron, too far away or too close
> to the first and you will be all day at working the tire over the rim. If
> you get it right you can walk around the rim with both irons and the
> tire slips over as easy as pie.
There's an even bigger secret that I only learned from reading the
generic stuff that I usually ignore in home repair manuals. It's the
"drop center" trick.
You want to avoid allowing the first bead to go down over the bead
retaining ramp on the lower side of the wheel. Keep the first bead in
the "drop center" of the wheel, if at all possible.
The drop center is that smaller diameter center part of the wheel.
Keeping the first bead in the drop center gives you a lot more room to
work your tire levers.
You may have noticed that there are 12-inch long tire levers for
amateur mechanics to use, but the professional manager of a motorcycle
tire store will have a 6-inch long lever he keeps in his shirt pocket.
The short lever works great for people who know exactly what they are
doing when they are spooning a tire onto the rim.
Some tires have very flexible carcasses, and you can easily keep the
first bead in the drop center, but other tires, like the Bridgetone
BT-45's have incredibly stiff cacasses and the tire resists the drop
center strategy. I actually had to pay a tire ape $15.00 to mount a
BT-45.
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