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T3 Pilot
Samba Member
Joined: January 10, 2011
Posts: 1507
Location: Deep South of the Great White North
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Ahwahnee
Samba Member
Joined: June 05, 2010
Posts: 9810
Location: Mt Lemmon, AZ
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 Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2019 11:36 am Post subject: Re: mounting tires yourself |
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I have always successfully balanced the tires using a simple bubble balancer... until a recent set on a non-VW car had a vibration I could not get rid of.
I installed glass beads and all was well.
These are the ones I used:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06W2N5MTW/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I wanted to install through the valve stems rather than dismounting the tires.
The glass beads look to be about .03" and a valve stem opening (once the valve is removed) is .125" so it is easy for the beads to clog if counter-measures aren’t taken.
I read & tried several techniques. In the end, here is what worked for me.
I placed a Harbor Freight Triangle Detail Sander wrapped in a towel on the wheel and touching the rubber valve stem:
I made a tool from a bit of wiper blade stiffener and sharpened it to a point to unclog any log jams. A length of stiff wire may work just as well.
Now it’s ready to fill. They provide the tube and the bottle, the beads are fed slowly into the tube. Squeezing the bottle is neither necessary nor helpful.
Link
If you do not rush, the beads will not jam but if they do then the tool is inserted and twiddled until things free up and flow:
Link
If you take it slowly it goes faster (no log jams) and you can get all 4 oz in there in under 5 minutes.
A test ride indicated to me that the tires were well balanced and the tiny but pesky vibration I was getting at 50-60 mph was gone. |
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truckersmike
Elder Sambanite
Joined: March 16, 2001
Posts: 2025
Location: Bellingham, WA
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| Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 6:43 am Post subject: Re: mounting tires yourself |
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| pathao wrote: |
$0 bead breaker
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And the winner is.....The small foot of the stock jack was perfect for breaking the stubborn beads on my 20 year old rotten tires. Looking forward to wrestling them off and installing new tread.
_________________
59 DD panel. Former Romano's TV delivery bus
67 Westy SO-42 pop-t |
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Busstom
Samba Member
Joined: November 23, 2014
Posts: 3853
Location: San Jose, CA
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| Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 11:14 pm Post subject: Re: mounting tires yourself |
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| vanagonjr wrote: |
| Busstom wrote: |
| I can post a picture if anyone is interested what one looks like . |
Yes please! |
Sorry I took so long! I had to cull through a couple of portable drives for these pics...
Anyhow, for this version, I made a couple of discs from poplar hardwood, this to raise the outer hub face of the wheel away from the Harbor Freight platen...you see, for polished or freshly powder coated wheels, you can avoid all contact with the outer wheel lip by mounting the tires from the backside, as the inverted rim illustrates in my photo...in this way, the tire is forced by hand over the first bead, then the second (backside) bead is installed with the duckhead, but if you scratch the rim, meh, it's hidden on the back. I also made one of these adapters for wide-5 early wheels, using a 5-130 to 5-205 adapter (there's a pic of the Wolfgang wheel adapter in my gallery, just not a pic of the tire-changing tool adapter, I can't find those...grrrhh).
Anyhooo, I hope this gives you some ideas to improve the tool. I don't use mine for car wheels anymore, just little trailer tires (as I mentioned earlier, I upgraded to a rim-clamp machine).
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vanagonjr
Samba Member
Joined: October 07, 2010
Posts: 3431
Location: Dartmouth, Mass.
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