Well, yesterday-

I have a weird little shake in the front and I know it is because there are no weights on the outside 5" of wheel.
They were balanced on the inside and up to the wheel disc with stick on weights.

I removed the front wheels/tires yesterday and removed the valve cores. I popped the bead of the tire, just slid right off ....16.5s....
Poured in 11oz of heavy .25 gram airsoft BBs in each and.......

Couldn't get the bead to seat. Tried every trick I knew except the ether pop....no ether.
So I will go to the tire shop this morning and get them to use that air tank air shooter thing-a-ma-jig on them.​

 

The tire shop used the pneumatic bead seater and tires have air in them again. I am going to buy one for myself. Found them on Ebay for less than $65.

After driving with them a few days....

Well, not so happy with the beads. They seem to work well at highway speed (butter smooth), but I get some crazy wobbles that come and go under 50 or so. No rhyme or reason to it. It might be perfect at 40mph and the next time at that speed it feels like a possum is hanging on my valve stem. It seems to be worse around corners. I have tried rotating the tires, every air pressure possible and adding more beads. Still there but has changed a little sometimes when I tried something. After more reading, I guess this combo is just one of the ones that beads do not work on. From what I have read now, the MTRs in particular seem to be resistant to beads and water balance methods.

I have made up my mind to just bite the bullet and allow my tire folks to put clip on weights on the outside of my wheels. Dynamic balance is the best balance and inside weight on such a big ole tire is not gonna cut it. These have almost 5" of wheel past the center and I am going to have to have some balance out there it seems. I guess once I verify that the balance issues are gone, I can take a tiny brush and paint the weights the same color as the wheel....

So back to Massey's to let them do what I should have done in the first place.

 

Went in to have them balanced, after seeing the tires on the balancer, all I have to say is "wow".
It does not shake bad, as a matter of fact they ride better than my old 285s even with the tremble. But, I want it better.

Two are pretty out of round. My tire store does tire truing and I have an appt. to get them trued and balanced Monday. They have a big sign up in the shop that says "Tires Are Not Round" LOL

The owner talked with me a while about truing, I had it done to the front tires on my Snap-on van about a year ago and it went from bad to perfect. The owner says a trued tire will last longer than an un-trued tire. He says a tire is only as good as it's lowest point, and truing only takes rubber off til the lowest point.

Anyway, at this point I am too deep into these to give up so Monday we will get them cut and balanced. He says he has trued thousands of big off road tires over the years and never had any that didn't balance and ride great. Been there for 50 years, so I believe him.

More info after Monday. I might even take a video. If you have never seen it done it is pretty cool.

 

What does that cost to get them trued? Is that like Road Force balancing them?

 

No, it is like turning them on a lathe. A machine is pushed up to the tire (still mounted on the veh) and a wheel turns the assembly. Then a blade spinning perpendicular to the tire is moved by turning control handles (just like a lathe) and trims rubber as the tire rotates. It effectively machines the tire to be round.

It hurts your feelings to see that rubber fall on the floor the first time you ever do it. My Snap-on truck was a vibrating mess with new Goodyears I got because of national pricing program. (19.5 heavy truck tires) and these same people showed me how out of round they were. They trued them, balanced them and that 20K lb truck drives and rides like a 2wd pickup.

They only cut to the lowest point already on the tires, so although you loose rubber, the tire is no worse off. The shop says they will last longer because they run cooler and have no bounce.

We tried turning them on the wheel today, but the issue is with the tire for sure. You know what they say: Mil-spec means made by the lowest bidder.
I could live with it, but I'm not. Little vibrations and rattles drive me insane.
Probably why I did vibration and noise along with steering/susp at the dealer, I hated it enough to find the problem LOL

Worked on big truck, hope it works on Brutus. We will see Monday.

I found a video. This is the same type of machine my shop uses.

 

Reminds me of high school auto shop. But ours was more like a belt sander. Not a blade.

 

My friend Dwayne used to be a Pinewood Derby car champ in the scouts. He said his secret was truing the plastic wheels on a lathe he made just for the purpose.

 

Good write-up, enjoyed the read. Your daughters truck is the virgin twin to my rode-hard-put-up-wet 4x4. Wish mine looked that good. No I don't, mine is a TRUCK and I'm not afraid to use it!

 

Daughter and virgin sound great together to this dad.

 

I know what you mean and at 44 you're still a chap!OL! See at 60 next month I fall into that rode-hard-put-up-wet classification!

 

My daughter is 20 in July....seems like yesterday she was begging me to do honeybuns (what she called donuts) in my Jeep.

 

What is this device?

The yellow air tank with a big valve and handle on them run $200 or more.

 

There are cheaper than this one, but I like the valve and gauge on this one better.
The Cheetah brand is 200, this knockoff is much less.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/360939851483?_trksid=p2060778.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

That's not a bad price. The "brand" name ones are Cheetah Tanks. When you fight tires for years and see one of these you must have one. I made one myself from a big rig air tank.

 

You can use them as a regular air tank too. Just put a T in place of the elbow and put a female quick connect there. Then make yourself a curly hose to plug into it for airing up tires away from your compressor.

The ether trick works too, but can end in disaster if done incorrectly.

I also bought this solid bar stock drawbar with shackle.