Clare, Xeno.... and anyone else who has actually mounted tires at home... this is a question simply to hone my skills, based on your experience.
Did you ever have a batch that just wouldn't seal after the final bead? o How did you prevent that from happening? o If it did happen, why did it happen, and, more importantly, o What TOOL do I need to get to solve this problem without helpers?
As you are well aware, everyone around me burns through tires due to the artificially high steering-induced positive camber causing camber scrub on the inside edge of the front wheels due to steep long windy hilly mountain one-lane asphalt roads:
And, as you are aware, I patchplug my own tires, as needed, since they get punctured usually about once or twice per set per lifetime of that set.
I buy whatever tools I need to mount tires at home, such as this HF bead breaker: which, I admit, sucks - particularly on the larger stiffer light truck tires, but, with a few slight modifications (such as the long board you see in this picture to "extend" the base - it works well enough such that in just a minute or two all the beads I've ever attempted have been broken:
In the past, you helped me with the various little-known tricks of the trade, such as the use of dish detergent and water to lubricate the bead
And you helped me understand the 'drop center' where there are about a dozen such tricks that are needed to more easily break and mount the six beads overall for each tire, before you seal it with the air pressure.
One indispensable trick Clare patiently explained is the clear distinction between the "yellow" dot and "red" dot for steel wheels which have long ago lost their match-mounting marks:
And, another bit of useful advice that the experts know is which tire valves are best, where I'm slowly using up my supply of the rubber ones so that I can go to the bolt on ones in the future exclusively:
Over time, taking in all this advice, I've successfully mounted & balanced almost two score tires at home, as witnessed by this pile being just the recent trash that I need to drop off at Costco at $1 per tire, plus tax.
Where I must say, they balanced BEAUTIFULLY (better than ever before!):
And yet - even after about 40 tires under my belt in the past few years, I _still_ occasionally get a stubber set of tires - like this last batch - which just wouldn't seat for the final pressurization stage after all six beads were mounted.
The problem was, without TWO HELPERS!, I couldn't seal the final bead for the life of me to pressurize the tire - which was a new problem for me.
Everything else was easy - but I couldn't get the air to stay inside!
Literally, I had to use 2 additional helpers just to squish the tire enough that I could get the bead to hold air for that critical first few seconds (and yes, the schrader valve was removed where I used the same equipment I've always used on these same sized passenger truck tires).
The only thing I did differently with this set of passenger truck tires was that they were stored on their treads for about half a year, since I bought two sets of the same tires, on sale, so I stored them.
Only after I pondered WHY was this one set so difficult to get the bead to seat did I wonder if they're supposed to be stored 'flat' and if that made the difference????
Did you ever have a set of tires that just wouldn't easily seal?
Two questions arise if you have experience with this specific problem.
- What additional tools do I need to purchase?
- What trick can I do to make it easier to seal the beads?