Posted by MoparNorm on Sunday, August 13, 2006 at 10:50AM :
In Reply to: Re: Tips for tire changing posted by David Sherman on Sunday, August 13, 2006 at 2:45AM :
...I'll leave the "never do that" posts to someone else, but you reminded me of two 17 year old kids who bought their first WC53 in the mid 60's. We were in pig heaven, cruising around in our near perfect $750 truck (that makes you sick to think about with todays prices), but I kept hearing a ringing sound (the truck was so quiet otherwise, like i said, it was perfect). The ringing got louder and louder over the course of several days. Try as we might, at 17 we just didn't have enough knowledge to find the source of the noise. Nearly a week later we were standing around admiring our "Beastie" and I instinctively kicked the right front tire (why do we do that?) BINGO! There was the "ringing" sound! I kicked again to confirm the location and proceeded to look closely at the wheel, the split ring was loose, so loose that the inside surface of the ring was shiney from spinning around (we were WAY ahead of our time, the first Spinner Wheel!). We jacked up the truck and took off the 22ply combat tire that was completely flat, not an ounce of air, but with only a 1" contact patch with the ground, not FLAT, because of the stiffness of the sidewalls we never knew it was flat! Only the absence of pressure against the split ring alerted us to the problem, as it allowed the ring to rotate. The tire was still a bear to dismount! We removed a 3" long piece of shrapnel (original tires!) from the tire, patched it and re-installed it, with NO knowledge of split rims...when the ring started to expand and come off we just released air and hit it with a sledge hammer, then kept adding air until it was seated properly. A few months later my friend started working at a truck tire shop, he came home the first day as white as a ghost and told me. "do you have any idea what those rings can do if they come off?" That's the last tire we did ourselves, we took the others to his work and placed them in the cage for a safer mounting experience.
Thanks for jogging my memory.
MN
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