Xplorer99
07-19-2011, 05:48 AM
i thought someone else might be able to use this trick, so here goes the story:
Backround: one front and one rear tire on my 400 dont hold air, they leak bad around the bead... so after a while they go flat...
so i took the 400 out finally for the first time this year (sucks working 7 days a week lol) put alot of miles on it....
i was at the end of the line, and going around a corner my front end slid and i almost went into a ditch... so i hopped off and went to pull the wheeler backwards.... looked down and my back tire was flat!!! uugh... well i pulled it over and pushed it forward.... off the bead on the outside of rim!
well my buddy had a tiny little air compressor from walmart in his truck, 12volt powered found here: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Slime-12-Volt-Tire-Inflator/14254129
he rode all the way to his truck and got it and came back... (all my wheelers get a 12volt cig plug - mainly for cell phone chargers but this worked too haha) we plugged it up fired up the wheeler and tried to seat the tire.... no way it would fill it up... just wouldnt put out enough air... so we take the tire off the wheeler and tried again... nope wouldnt work....
heres where it gets interesting: we where beside a little creek.... so we tired putting water around the bead while we tried to seat it... (similar to what we do at work to seal vaccum tanks) still didnt work..
then my buddy suggested filling the tire up with water.... theory being that the more wated, the less air required to fill the same amount of space...made sense..and worth a try...
using an empty gatorade bottle, we filled the rim and tire up completely with water. put the pump on it and tired again... i say o look i think its working..... and by god the tire started filling with air!!! after it got hard, when the bead actually seated, water sprayed out of the bead like a garden sprinkler! !!!!! well after everyone stopped laughing about how we just mounted my tire, we put it back on the wheeler! you could hardly pick the tire up it was so heavy... but it was inflated... by the time we made it back the the trailer, it was almost empty again lol
just thought it would share this with everyone. i know its not practical all the time, but it saved us ALOT of time - taking tire off, leaving the wheeler in the woods, having to drive all the home or somewhere to get the tire mounted with an air compressor, coming back and putting it back on.. etc.... total down time was 30 mins. if nothing else, its an interesting story lol
Backround: one front and one rear tire on my 400 dont hold air, they leak bad around the bead... so after a while they go flat...
so i took the 400 out finally for the first time this year (sucks working 7 days a week lol) put alot of miles on it....
i was at the end of the line, and going around a corner my front end slid and i almost went into a ditch... so i hopped off and went to pull the wheeler backwards.... looked down and my back tire was flat!!! uugh... well i pulled it over and pushed it forward.... off the bead on the outside of rim!
well my buddy had a tiny little air compressor from walmart in his truck, 12volt powered found here: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Slime-12-Volt-Tire-Inflator/14254129
he rode all the way to his truck and got it and came back... (all my wheelers get a 12volt cig plug - mainly for cell phone chargers but this worked too haha) we plugged it up fired up the wheeler and tried to seat the tire.... no way it would fill it up... just wouldnt put out enough air... so we take the tire off the wheeler and tried again... nope wouldnt work....
heres where it gets interesting: we where beside a little creek.... so we tired putting water around the bead while we tried to seat it... (similar to what we do at work to seal vaccum tanks) still didnt work..
then my buddy suggested filling the tire up with water.... theory being that the more wated, the less air required to fill the same amount of space...made sense..and worth a try...
using an empty gatorade bottle, we filled the rim and tire up completely with water. put the pump on it and tired again... i say o look i think its working..... and by god the tire started filling with air!!! after it got hard, when the bead actually seated, water sprayed out of the bead like a garden sprinkler! !!!!! well after everyone stopped laughing about how we just mounted my tire, we put it back on the wheeler! you could hardly pick the tire up it was so heavy... but it was inflated... by the time we made it back the the trailer, it was almost empty again lol
just thought it would share this with everyone. i know its not practical all the time, but it saved us ALOT of time - taking tire off, leaving the wheeler in the woods, having to drive all the home or somewhere to get the tire mounted with an air compressor, coming back and putting it back on.. etc.... total down time was 30 mins. if nothing else, its an interesting story lol