I still have work to do to finish up the atlas, but I want to be able to set the Jeep on its tires for the tunnel mods needed for the shifter. I sold my 33” tires last week and the new 35s and rims have been laying around taking up space. So its time to get them mounted. I have Coyote beadlocks to install with them. Tire shops won’t do those so I’m on my own. I’ve done many bike tires. Same principle, right? Also, pneumatic beadlocks exist in the mountain bike world. In fact, the success of those devices for downhill mountain biking is what started my interest in a similar system for the Jeep. I’ll admit the idea of manually mounting 35” tires was daunting. I watched the video on the Coyote site a few times(
https://www.coyoteents.com/installing-coyote-boltless-beadlocks-video/).
@jjvw and
@mrblaine were both helpful in suggesting tools. I didn’t need to dismount the old tires (had a shop do that). There is some prep work for both the rims and new tires. My rims have some rock rash so I needed to smooth that out to remove sharp edges and to make them look nicer.
I used a paint stripping wheel on my grinder. That worked very nicely on the aluminum.
The tires also need prep (no pics-forgot). You need to smooth the inner edge of the bead which apparently can be sharp enough to cut the inner tube. Coyote recommends using a small pneumatic angle grinder with a 40 grit 2” wheel. I have that but my 2” wheel was shot so I used a 36 grit flap disc on my 4.5” grinder. It worked but I don’t recommend it. The flap disc gets a lot of traction on the rubber and it can really bounce around (dangerous). Then you need to vacuum all the rubber dust out of the tire.
Next, I spread everything out with the Coyote video on my ipad.
Now more wheel prep. The stickers need to come off and I cut out the old valve stem.
Then you need to drill a second valve hole in the rim for the inner (high pressure) chamber. It seems counterintuitive, but Coyote recommends this hole be within 6-8” of the other valve hole. The reason is the extra weight of the valves helps counter balance the overlapped and sewn together area of the polyester webbing is which makes up the “tread” of the inner tire. Therefore, that is clocked opposite the valve holes. Drilling the 5/16” hole in your rim seems like commitment
.
The hole needs to be chamfered on both sides (just a bit) to create a sealing surface for the rubber o-rings.
Now, the inner tube and inner tire get powdered to allow the tube to move freely against the inner tire which helps to prevent damage/leaks. Coyote provides plenty of powder.
OK. Time to start mounting the tire. I worried the most about this, but it actually went very smoothly. Coyote recommends windex, rather than soap solution to lube the bead because the tire is less prone to slip when re wetted in the wild. The front face of the rim goes through the inside bead first. Coyote’s instructions aren’t too specific here but I quickly figured out that the end of my spoons with the little round bar welded on transversely worked perfectly.
The specific tire spoons/levers that I bought were OTC 5735-35G. They are a little spendy but excellent. They are double ended with different tools at either end and 35” long for good leverage.
Once the first bead is on the rim, you flip it over.
Then you sequentially, by hand, put the inside of the inner tire on and the inner tube in, securing the inner tube valve in the new hole with 2 o-rings, washer and a nut. Laying the tube in flat and free of wrinkles or folds and being sure it is NOT under either bead of the inner tire are important.
The new valve for the outer tire has a channel which extends up between the inner and outer tires to allow air to move from the original valve into the outer (low pressure) chamber.
Once that is in place and secured with its included seal plus washer and nut, the second bead of the inner is pushed onto the rim. Note that the inner tube and inner tire are pushed on by hand
fairly easily.
Now, its time to mount the 2nd bead of the outer tire. Other than the tire irons, the only additional tool I bought was the vice grip device which clamps onto the rim and holds the 2nd bead down in the channel. I don’t think this was absolutely necessary but it sure was a helpful 3rd hand when doing this alone. Coyote says start just past the outer valve stem (the one with the channel) and carefully work your way around.
Note, now I’m using the opposite end of the tool. The little nub gently keeps the tire bead from sliding up as I bring it around. This part took the most amount of force and I was also very careful positioning the spoons to prevent damaging the tube or inner tire.
Upon reaching the outer valve, I was again careful to prevent damaging the channel as the bead dropped over.
Next, you put 10 psi into the inner chamber to move the outer tire beads out against a sealing surface. Then spray windex on both beads and add air to the outer chamber until the beads seat.
Finally, finish inflating the high pressure chamber (max is 50 psi and Coyote suggests 40 to allow for thermal expansion) and then outer (low pressure) chamber to your desired tire pressure. I went with 23 psi. Repeat until all tires mounted. Use soapy water at valve stems to check for leaks. Done.
I let them sit over night and re checked all the pressures. All were good so I rinsed them off and threw them on the Jeep (next post).
). But I eventually got it done with my battery powered grinder.
