Mounting tires

[schmism]

I've been around the block a time or two. I've mounted my fair share of troublesome tires. Wheelbarrows, yard carts, lawmowers you name it. However I have never had to mount one of the large rear R4 titans on my class 2 CUT. This past week was my first (unpleasant) experience having to go through this.


I have a leaky front tire (bad valve stem) and that I have to air up every day or so but rarely does it loose the bead so its as easy as just throwing the air chuck on it.
The rear tire however lost its bead and was showing a gnarly gap.

So off comes the tire, I round up a ratchet strap and get to work. Oh boy was I in for a treat. An hour later I was no closer to a sealed bead than when I started. I did all the tricks. Straps, beating on it with a sledge, getting the large flow rate air line out, nothing was working.
So Ill fall back to the tried and true method of spray some flammable liquid in it and hit it with the propane torch. This is not a method I like to use, its my last resort method, have used it a half a dozen times over the years, mostly seating large 35" and larger off road tires back on rims on the side of the trail, never before on a Titan branded tractor tire.

The flammable stuff in a can that I remember being great 10-15 years ago.... I guess brake clean isn't what it used to be. and the carb cleaner is seems worse, as if i just sprayed kerosene in the tire, some sort of a nice warm cracking fire in my tire not the WHOOOMMMMPPPPP that i need!

So yeh, it takes like 5 tries, 3 different versions of spay solvent before I find one that will ignite like i need.
Its mounted but man, talk about a fight.

What are you guys using these days that have to do this more often?

 

[Threepoint]

[snip]
So yeh, it takes like 5 tries, 3 different versions of spay solvent before I find one that will ignite like i need.
Its mounted but man, talk about a fight.

What are you guys using these days that have to do this more often?

I'm guessing the dealer's service bay.

 

[RjCorazza]

I'm at a 33% success rate with tractor and mower tires, with 3 attempts.
The front R4 on my previous L3410 was the only successful one using ether starting fluid. I started with small shots of the ether, and worked my way up until there was enough to set the bead without killing myself.
I don't want to talk about the other two attempts!
The last time I needed tires on my zero turn I had a tire shop handle it - money well spent.

 

[oldballs]

Me too, I don't do that anymore, even on small carts. Letting a tire shop do it makes me much happier.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[Gary Fowler]

Me too, I don't do that anymore, even on small carts. Letting a tire shop do it makes me much happier.

Cheers,
Mike

Same here. I have put air back in tires when they popped off the rim seat from too little air, but trying to put the tire on or off is the job of a professional with the professional tools to do it right. It is worth the $10 for them to do it especially with the 10-12 ply tires that are so stiff that they dont squat on the tractor when they have 0 tire pressure.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Just noted that I forgot to mention that I will tackle a bicycle tire but that is about all since I can do that without any tools other than a screwdriver.

 

[LouNY]

I have one of the smaller 5 gallon bead blasters for seating tires.
At times it takes several attempts as well as straps and other methods to get a tire seated.
I have had some that I could get seated and then lose while replacing the cores, that gets aggravating.
I have had to resort to using a tube to get the beads seated then breaking down just one bead if I needed that tube.
I have looked at the rubber mounting rings, but that would be a lot of different sized ones.

 

[TractorGuy]

Staring Fluid (Ether) is the vehicle of choice. I keep a can just in case but I'm always afraid to try it. I usually fight with them until I get them to seat without it.

I bought a pair of straight through clamp on air chucks. I removed the core on one and drilled the inside out as large as it would go. Another trick is to just remove the core from the valve stem and push a 1/4" air plug firmly over the threads then plug the air hose on. This achieves maximum air volume into the stem.

The guy that came out to install a rear tire on my backhoe fought with it for a couple of hours. He put a tube in the day before and damaged it so he decided to get it to go on tubeless for the come back repair. He had one of those high volume discharge tanks he would blow air in through the bead gap with. Dang thing would just about knock him off his feet every time he opened the valve. He finally got it to seat with the tank and packing a few pounds of bead lubricant in the gap. He had bead lubricant all over him, the backhoe, and ground but it finally seated.

 

[herm0016]

discount tire will do it for about 20 dollars a wheel. takes them about 20 min to dismount and mount a set of tires on a lawn tractor. money well spent. i figure my time is worth about 35 and it would have taken me way more than 2.5 hrs to wrestle with it.

 

[ovrszd]

As TractorGuy mentioned, Starting Fluid.