More times than I like

Who doesn’t remember seating tire beads with starter fluid like this is a question asked by those that didn’t have a tire machine or a big air compressor on hand when you needed one!

Not saying this is the correct way to set a Bead but, well what works, works!

Way back in the day I worked lifting 4×4 trucks, Jeeps and quite a lot of street machines too. This meant I did a lot of tire mounting and the shop I worked at didn’t have a tire machine 🙁

We would use a shop up the highway to mount tires normally but, at times like Sundays or late at night we needed to mount some tires.

That or the big 4×4 tires were too big for the local garages tire machine anyway. We always were worried that when we used the starter fluid that the tire would lift off the ground and shoot some place into the shop that we did not want it too.

So we would try to lower the lift onto the tire so it was trapped and couldn’t shoot off unexpectedly or worse into anyone standing around!

Another problem was older tires that have started to harden up. Yeah I know, why on earth would you think about using an old dry rotted tire?

Well way back in the day, if it held air it was fair game! That or they just don’t make that specific tire anymore and you need it on the car for some date code show or something to that extent?

I look at a lot of these vids and understand that when you’re off doing a field repair then you do not have a choice at that point with Either being your only choice to get the bead to catch so you can put air in some pieces of equipment tire!

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