Question about breaking the bead using a harbor freight bead breaker?

[clare]

Just KNEW he'd screw SOMETHING up. It was "in the stars".

[Frank Baron]

On Tue, 20 Dec 2016 23:18:03 -0500, [e-mail] advised:

I agree there is irony in me forgetting to drop the pressure down from 45 to something like 35. The door placard says 29.

I called her and asked if the ride felt different and she said she didn't notice.

What do you think the danger zone is for tires anyway? I read 65psi (so 45 is well below that, but of course, tires heat up in use).

Where do you think the danger psi is?

[trader_4]

I'm left wondering why you over inflated the tires to begin with.

[Frank Baron]

On Wed, 21 Dec 2016 08:20:28 -0800 (PST), trader_4 advised:

That's a good question. Remember, I'm not an expert (and I never claimed to be one).

Also remember that I am asking for advice, so, I will tell you what I did, whereas someone else will make believe they did everything perfectly (which is how all DIYs are written, from a 20/20 hindsight perspective).

The reason I inflated them to 45 was that I had to inflate them to about 60 PSI to ensure the bead was set, and then I dropped the inflation down and checked the bead with soap and water for bubbles indicating a leak.

As a *further* leak indicator, I set them all to 45psi to see if they leaked. Since I wasn't going to have the tires for a long time, I was planning on checking the pressure after a few hours while I had the vehicle overnight.

My plan was to drop the pressure to 35 when the owner came back for the vehicle. The owner came back early to pick up the vehicle, so, I just plain forgot to do that in the fuss, so, I never checked if they were leaking down from the 45psi.

In the meantime, I did five more tires, as an experiment and for practice, where I patched each one of them with a home-made plug-patch.

Here's the inside look at the plug:

And here's the inside look at the patch over that plug:

Of the five experiments, one tire still won't go on the rim, even though we had a matched set of tires and rims, which went on just fine!

For the life of us, we can't figure out *how* to get this last tire on the rim, even though its sister tire and rim went on just fine. (We even bent the tire iron tip, using all the force that we did.)

[Davej]

I have both of them. They are both weak. As with any Chinese tool you usually need to strengthen or otherwise improve what you get. So the general rule is to use them gently with caution. However it is probably cheaper to improve them than to buy the vastly more expensive industrial/professional-grade tools. Youtube can be helpful as people will show you what they did to destroy or improve various cheap tools.

[Frank Baron]

On Wed, 21 Dec 2016 10:44:14 -0800 (PST), Davej advised:

Thank you Davej for that advice which I agree with: a. The HF bead-breaking tools suck, but, b. Fixing the HF tools is cheaper than buying a better tool

For example, on the purpose-built HF bead breaker, *all* the wheels I did (15 and 16 inches in diameter) were too big for the base. You'd think the manufacturer would know how big a tire is. Luckily, adding this board "extended" the base sufficiently to do 15 and 15 inch wheels:

What sucks about the tire-changing tool bead-breaker attachment is: a. The bead-breaker arms are too weak (and bend like a pretzel) b. The clevis pins (thanks Clare) are far too sloppy (replace with bolts) c. The bead breaker arc is far too small (about 1/2 to 1/4 of what you need d. The tire iron twists out of your hands (use a vise grip to prevent that) e. The tire iron is too soft so it bends when used as a lever (use pipe) f. The base *must* be bolted down for SUV tires which require turning force g. The red tire iron flat tip bends like rubber on the tougher tires! HF Pittsburgh Bead Breaker, Harbor Freight item #92961

What sucks about the standalone bead breaker tool is: a. The base is far too short for big tires b. The base has no attachment holes for securing to concrete or pallets c. The lever action isn't all that powerful (but it's strong enough) HF Pittsburgh Manual Tire Changer, Harbor Freight item #62317

However, both can be made to work:

But both bent horribly in the wheels and tires that I did.

For example, I just removed & patched-plugged these five 15-inch 75-series SUV tires and 16-inch 55-series sedan tires last night:

The tire-changer bead breaker isn't useful for tough tires, but it worked on the easier tires. The problem with the tire changer is that the toughest tire of the 5 defeated it, and *still* isn't on the wheel, even after bending the tire iron (which is made of too-soft metal for hard tires):

I can't for the life of me figure out why a sister tire went on the same size rim, but this one still won't go on no matter what I try.

[andrewangelo88]

Dude did you ever get your tire changed? I was actually trying to buy this harbor freight tire changer today but they were sold out so I just got 2 tire irons from them. I broke the bead with my harbor freight floor jack, some lumber and a tow strap. I know you said earlier you weren't trying to do stuff a "rednecK" way but I found it to work great for breaking a bead.

[gfretwell]

For the few tires I change in my life, I will just give the tire guy at the end of the street $10. Sometimes they have trouble with those little tires and they have a shop full of professional equipment. For commodity things like trailer tires and golf carts, I buy the tires mounted, for a couple bucks more than a tire and a stem.