Hot Rods Mounting tires on wheels with no safety beads

The Fly has a real early set of American 12 spokes, prior to a safety bead being standard on the wheels. I have a hard time finding a tire shop that wants to mess with it.

It is possible that you can inflate the tires and they won't be centered. Ask anyone that was at the first HAMB Drags....

It's time for new tires and I don't wanna hafta go through all this again. Anyone ever done this at home? Any secrets? Am I the only one left that has wheels with no safety bead?

Thanks for the input.

 

Happens on old tube type motorcycle wheels quite a bit. There's normally a seam line where the bead meets the sidewall that is a good indication that the bead is or isn't fully pushed out.

 

Thanks. I had pondered trying it myself at home.

 

Can you run tubes?

 

I'm sure I could, but if you get off center, it dribbles like a basketball. Not sure if the tubes would help that issue.

 

I had no beads on Mags on the 32 for a long time , just take your time and inflate sloooowly , look them over and wish them well .

 

Lube them up good and it shouldn't be a problem.

 

Are the tire stores having a problem with the lack of safety beads, or are they just spooked because those are spindle-mounts and don't look like regular wheels? Or do they not fit the tire change machines? Safety beads, while they've been around since the '30s, weren't all that common until the mid-late '60s and weren't federally required until the '70s.

I've never found them to be any worse to properly seat than a beaded rim, I'm not sure what the problem is. If you're using tubes, use talcum powder for lube.

 

I have 16.5” wheels on my old 3/4 ton truck and they dont have saftey beads. I mount my own tires and the trick is to lube them up then inflate them. After they are inflated let the air out to around 15psi. “Dont go too low or they will just bust rite off the wheel again, real pain in the ass!” Then take a hammer, i use a 3lbs mini sledge, and beat around the tire on all sides and they usally always center themselves when doing this. Then inflate to the rite psi and go for a ride! Good luck!


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One other thought... If the tire stores won't touch them, try a motorcycle shop. They're used to dealing with tubes, and may even have a specialized machine that can handle those wheels.

 

Mount them at home. baby powder on the tube, if tube type, and rim lube on the bead of the tire, a little on the inside too where the bead has to jump the rim. Air them up, you will see if it centered . If not, deflate and do it again

 

I had some radials put on safety beadless, steel wheels (clean rim surfaces..!) done a short while back (about 3 months back) without problem..! The beads slid right into place with nary a sound.
BUT...they leak. One needs air every week, one about every two weeks and one sealed enough for about once a month, needing air.
The forth...went flat while in an In N Out line..! I'm just around the corner, so I drove it home..! The tire's trash as you can imagine.

After having a problem with all four wheels leaking, I would NOT put radials on wheels without safety beads...without using tubes. Yea, I know, radial tire tube are expensive, but the above is my story.

Use your own judgement.

Mike

 

All the magnesium Halibrands and Americans my family has run over the years have no safety beads. We always use tubes.

Last summer my bro and I were mounting some fresh tires on the Americans for his coupe Ol Yeller. We didn't trust the tire store monkey to be gentle with the wheels that cost more than his monthly salary. We cut the old tires off ourselves, and after cleaning the wheels, slid them on using the SamIyam plastic bag method. One of the rear slicks didn't want to seat itself all the way, but after sitting fully aired for a week it went all the way on.

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...s-at-home-with-a-garbage-bag-diy-tech.940923/

Make sure you DO NOT use any water-based lube when sliding the tire on the wheel. It will corrode the inside of the wheel for years to come, since there is no way for it to dry completely out. We used some Gibbs on the wheels last summer.

 

Didn't know such a thing didn't exist. Do old stock wheels, like early Ford steelies have safety beads?

 

No wheels had safety beads til some time in the 70's or 80's.

 

Gotcha- I had a Hot Rod guy who is also a Discount Tire store manager mount the 40 steelies with tubes and they were great.

 

70's or 80's...WAY incorrect..!
My 56 Chevy's "factory"...wheels had the safety beads.
One of my 54 Studebakers wheels were NOT safety beaded, BUT the 55's (original) wheels do have safety beads. Two out of three of my 54 Stude car wheels DID/do have the safety beads. So it appears that at least with Studebaker, 1954 may well have been the transition year for adding this safety item to their cars.

Mike

 

I have a pair of old mag wheels, that don't have the safety beads. But they also seem to have too large of diameter, where the tire bead would seat. The old tires needed to be cut off, they would not fit over the flange. I tried mounting a new tire on one, and it just would not seat.

But I've mounted lots of tires on steel wheels that don't have the safety bead, no problems with them, ever.

So...maybe the wheels I have need to be machined to get it to the proper size, and while they're at it, they could add the safety bead, and maybe cut down the outside diameter of the flange a bit so the tire will fit over it.

just one more thing to consider

 

They were an exception. I've had some wheels from the 60s without them.

 

The safety beads have absolutely nothing to do with tires sealing or not, if the beads are leaking then the bead surface is either damaged or dirty just like they would still leak with safety beads.

The safety beads are to keep the tire from coming off the bead in the event of a rapid loss of air.


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I would think the safety bead came around about the same time as tubeless tires...

 

there’s still wheels without safety beads long after radial and tubeless tires, any 16.5” rim has no safety beads, I have six on a gooseneck trailer, radial tires and no tubes, they hold air just fine

 

Safety beads were introduced by Dodge in 1940, and tubeless tires first came on Packards in 1954.

 

As others have said, the safety bead is more there to retain the tire when it loses pressure or is run too low / has too much side load. On something that is properly seated and aired up I would not worry about it. Big trucks and trailers not only don't have a safety bead, they also have a really steep bead angle to aid breaking the bead down in the field. Anything with 16.5, 19.5, 22.5 or 24.5 wheels and tires runs this way with no problems.

 

My local truck and farm tire shop gives me a cup full of the rim lube they use for free. Its a vegetable oil based stuff, about the consistency of jam for your toast. A coffee cup will last me years. Used to buy a product called RIM NO RUST at the store, looked more like black grease, but when I couldn't find it anymore I started begging at the tire shop. Makes mounting easy, and helps seal tubeless tires. I mostly mount all tires at home with my favorite irons that came with Model T truck tool kits

 

So, I will probably run a tube and will mount them myself, just because the $8.00/hr kid won't care.
I have already removed the tires, but I won't probably remount until I get ready to go back together.

I don't want to buy tires that will sit around for 2 years. Just trying to get my ducks in a row. I usually use a place called Carter Maxwell Goodyear. They do a lot of race car stuff. But, they aren't always gonna be around, so I figured I would tackle it myself.

 

Keystones seem to have this problem but it’s actually not a problem. U have to mount the tires from the back of the wheel instead of from the front. They made backwards! The rear flange of the wheel is a little bigger on most wheels but not keystones. The front flange of them are bigger.


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You would think that, but it didn't. Chrysler invented the safety bead in the late '30s and was the only major manufacturer to consistently use them until mid '60s. Ford and GM started using them when disc brakes (and the corresponding 'special' wheels for them) came into use. By the late '60s they were pretty much standard on all cars, but weren't federally required on new cars until 1975.

As far as finding some 'oddball' older applications, keep in mind that the OEMs all bought at least some of their wheels from subcontractor suppliers like Kelsey-Hayes and others, it's entirely possible some safety bead hoops 'leaked' onto non-Chrysler wheels.

And there may have been one more factor. Detroit was loath to pay licensing fees for patented items (dating back to Fords refusal to pay for the Selden patent) and more than a few inventions were ignored by Detroit until the patent ran out, that may have been the case here. Closed cooling systems were one. Another was a better replacement for GMs 'magic eye' auto headlight dimmer that Bill Lear came up with (yes, that Bill Lear). Yet another was intermittent wipers. A guy named Robert Kearns invented a low-cost circuit to do this and shopped it around Detroit, but was turned down by everyone. A few years later they started appearing on Fords first, then GM and Chrysler a bit later. Kearns sued, but spent literally years in court before finally winning his intellectual property theft case against Ford. GM and Chrysler settled shortly thereafter.

 

I like intermittent wipers, buy that man a beer !

 

I don’t understand why they had to be cut off, - if they went on over the rim originally, why couldn’t they come off in a similar albeit opposite manner ?
Do they shrink when in use ?
Never heard of tyres having to be cut off !