Posted by Chris Davis on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 at 0:05AM :
My WC-51 has been waiting patiently in the garage for the last year or so while I finished our basement. That project seemed to never end, but finally, I got the last of the trim up, and the last of the paint done… and had time to work on my Dodge!
The truck has a complete set of combat rims, plus three, so a total of eight wheels with 60 year old NDT tires on them. I figured I’d take apart the four the truck isn’t currently sitting on and pick the best wheel assembly to clean up and mount one of my good Michelin 11.00 x 16 tires. Then I can work my way around the wheels on the truck itself, putting new tires on as I go.
I actually attempted to take apart three of the loose combat rims some months ago, but all I managed to do was loosen the ring retaining nuts. The ring itself wouldn’t move on any of them, and I didn’t have time to do much more than soak them in WD40 and leave them for another day. I should note here that if you’re new to combat rims, make sure you let all the air out before you remove those outer ring nuts. I did, so there were no unpleasant surprises… and I’m still here to write to you.
I picked the most friendly looking wheel and tried to pull the ring away with a couple long tire bars specifically made for breaking down two piece rims. I bought them off an old tire man and have used them successfully on M37 split rings, but they seemed to be of no use here. The ring/wheel/tire combo laughed at my efforts. “We’ve been together 60+ years now… you think an hour of you prying with those silly bars is going to break us up? Ha!”
So… when appropriate tools for the job just won’t cut it, turn to brute force, or in this case, weight. I rolled the tire out to my ’84 GMC suburban… It’s equipped with a boat anchor of a diesel engine giving it a ton or so of weight on the front axle. I laid the tire on its side and drove up on just the tire, not the rim itself… I repeated the process several times… and the tire still wouldn’t separate from the rim! The time had come for more drastic measures… so I broke out the Saws-All reciprocating saw.
Those NDTs are thick! I managed to cut through, but didn’t want to accidentally notch the rim so I stopped short of the actual edge… leaving the thick inner bead intact and the tire still stubbornly attached to the rim. I remembered reading on-line that the inner bead on these tires had a wire rope core and that a chisel could be used to cut it. I tried the chisel, but I couldn’t get a good grip on it at the bottom my thin “V” cut.
Finally I got smart and cut away a good 6 inches of tire so I could see the bead. After a lot of chisel work I did manage to cut the cores on each bead. I pried up a section of bead and low and behold… a metal lip in there… this wheel still had the bead lock “run flat” ring in it! No wonder I couldn’t make any progress with the tire bars. Well, another 15 minutes of prying and I had what was left of the tire off. Only 7 more to Go!
Chris Davis – UT
’45 WC-51
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