Does anyone make a STURDY Tire Wrench

[Mayayana]

| >And I thought it was the Frenchmen everybody blames the metric system | >on - not the "commies" | | They are more socialist than the soviets these days.

Indeed. They have health insurance. I guess that makes them commies, right? Civilized countries allow insurance companies and hospitals to fleece the public to any extent they like. My pickup is Japanese, but it's also metric. And it came with a lug wrench. Are the Japanese commies? I thought they were monarchists turned capitalists.

I have a warning, though, about good old American, non-commie, God-fearing tape measures. I bought a new Stanley leverlock type recently without paying attention to anything but the length. It turned out the tape is metric on one side and inches on the other. What I mean is that it's only printed on one side of the tape, but includes both systems, with one marked along each edge. It's completely unusable. I had to buy another tape measure.... So watch out for those half-commie tape measures.

[bob haller]

Do note!

Alunimum rims can cause lots of problems.

alunimum rusts, At the contact area with the tire, at the bead.....

these air losses tend to occur when the weather changes......

My wifes care had repetive fat tires. we had a family member dying and my wife drove on the flat and ruined the tire and wheel. the garage had a standard steel wheel in stock so they replaced the alunimum one with steel one.

in the following year the only tire that didnt go flat was the one with the steel wheel.

so when the next flat occured I asked the garage, who showed me the corroded aluniimum wheel.

When we needed tires I bought 4 new steel wheels, kept the existing steel wheel for the spare.

The car went over 10 years after the wheel swap, with only one or two flats from tire punctures.

[gfretwell]

Lighten up dude, it was a joke

[rbowman]

Yeah, a friend has those on his wheels. The added advantage is a thief needs the special socket before he leaves your ride up on cinder blocks.

[rbowman]

French politics haven't been the same since they seperated most of the intelligent people from their heads a couple of centuries ago.

[rbowman]

Yeah, that's why everyone in France these days is looking over the border into Germany and wondering who really lost the war.

I've got a Toyota and two Suzuki bikes. It's very refreshing to work on them and know everything is going to be metric. The Harley and the F150, otoh, scatter metric fasteners in the damnedest places so I need both sets of tools.

[clare]

My 19 year old Ford pickup has never had a flat tire - and in

320,000KM it has worn out only 1 1/2 sets of tires - all mounted on alloy rims. I now have my snow tires on another set of alloys, and have new 16 inch tires on alloy rims for the last 2 years. The original wheels are still holding air - lost less than 5PSI over the last 2 years.

One of the snow tires was down 10PSI over the last summer of storage.

[TimR]

ou put on them.

ntiseize and is less messy.

Whatever it was designed for - and I tend to doubt that the taper had anyth ing to do with it - but whatever, it is now used successfully for a huge ar ray of purposes never thought of originally. Anywhere a fastener needs to be eventually removed, and could use some lube when installed, teflon tape has proved successful, including some high temp applications I would never have thought of.

[gfretwell]

I had a Chrysler with the high end aluminum rims and I had one that simply refused to hold air. I just took it to the tire guy, had him break it down, I wire brushed the crud out of the rim and it never lost air again. The tire guy said he learned something.

[Stormin Mormon]

Doesn't understand capitalism, where companies compete to provide the best quality at the lowest price.

- . Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus

.

[Stormin Mormon]

I'd try truck stops, NAPA and various auto parts stores. Expect to pay more for the good one.

My answer has been the impact socket set from Harbor Freight, and the breaker bar. I've had good results with that.

I'm also OCD about having the shop let me do the final tighten with my own torque wrench.

[Stormin Mormon]

I've just had tires put on my Blazer, a couple months ago. And one flat, has to be the right front where I never look. Anyhow, I've got to make sure to check the air in that tire every couple weeks, now. One more thing to do.

The tire shops use some kind of slop when they put the tires off and on. They also have been known to grease the rim after wire brushing. That helps them hold air.

[Mayayana]

| Lighten up dude, it was a joke

Interesting. My "joke" was deliberately over-the-top and ironic, yet you missed the humor. I don't detect any irony in your post. Is it just inherently funny slurring socialism? Maybe I just didn't get it. Try me again. Maybe try another group this time, like, say, plutocrats. :)

[clare]

He learned something he should have known very well to call himself a "tire guy"

[clare]

They use a vegetable soap product, one of the most common being the Ru-Glyde brand from AGS Company to mount the tires on the rims. Petroleum based grease is a NO-NO. There are several bead sealer products out there that if used properly will ensure a leakproof bead seal. XTraSeal is one of the most commonly used, along with Bell and Steelman Bead Sealers.

A homemade mixture of equal parts mold-makers latex and windsheild washer concentrate with about 1/4 part "slime" tube sealer is said to work almost as well as the best commercial product.

The secret is to have both the rim AND the bead as clean as possible before mounting the tire.

[Mayayana]

| | Alunimum rims can cause lots of problems. | | alunimum rusts, At the contact area with the tire, at the bead..... |

That's an interesting point in light of Ford's new aluminum pickup trucks -- whether aluminum will last as long as steel. Though I have a Tacoma that's already been recalled once for rusting chassis problems. They slopped a tarry goop onto it, which wore off, and doesn't seem to have done much good. My last Toyota p-up went 18 years and 239K miles with no notable rust because I had a rustproofing treatment when I bought it. When I bought the current truck no one seemed to be doing rustproofing anymore. The chassis just has something like black primer paint on it. I naively figured that maybe the black paint was some kind of high-tech anti-rust coating. No such luck. :) I'm surprised it's legal for them to sell it that way.

[gfretwell]

This was a long time ago when alloy wheels were not that common. There were a lot of tire shops who would not even handle them.

[Stormin Mormon]

Lot is based on location and salt presence. Some towns near the ocean, things rot away promptly. Parts of NY state, they salt the roads generously, and vehicles all rot away. OTOH, Arizona has nearly no humidity, vehicles last many years.

[gfretwell]

Get a Corvette

[Stormin Mormon]

Why?