Hey, Oldfeller, I just had a thought...Maybe you could be the SuzukiSavage Darkside Tire-mounting-guy, what says you?  $50 each?  $75?

Dam, knew I should've said something about that!

Glad you're alright though.  I guess now we got something on oldfeller... you know that guy that tell everyone to go darkside?  And the poor newbie walks into blowing up his tire and nearly kills hisself?

yeah, that's the guy.

But you know, it's probably your fault, that station probably had stale air in it's tank, hadn't changed it in years.  What did he think it was sour dough?  

So, my 'puter breaks down for a few days and all sorts of poop starts to fly.

My air gauge only goes to 50# and when I was letting the air pressure down after the bead popped, it took a lot of tries before I got into that 50# range. The trick is as mentioned numerous time here is lots of soapy water on the bead area. And when you're going into the known toughness of bead popping a car tire you want to have a new tube in there. I don't think I would have trusted my 2 1/2 year old, used in two tires tube for the job. But, an explosion of tire and tube - WOW! I've not heard of anything like that since I was a young lad mounting split-ring truck tires in south Florida.

I've got to almost think that was an old or flawed tube. And as for the tire exploding, I would think they're able to handle a lot of not rolling air pressure. Maybe it too was a possible weak link, factory fault or something along those lines. It's pretty standard to have to put 100# or so of air in a car tire on a car rim to pop the bead to make sure it's seated.

Now I wonder about that spray bed liner idea to seal the spoke ends. It's my understanding that we're not trying to keep air in there, but rather keep the spoke ends from rubbing through the tube. My inner wheel has a rubber coating of some sort over the spoke ends and the center trough of the rim. I thought of adding a rubber strip around the inside like my bicycle has for its rims, but since my old tube showed no wear at all I decided to take the risk. I would bet that any of that spray that got on the rim near the edges would definately NOT help in the tire bead slipping into place, no matter how much soap you used.

I do have a suggestion for the next time/person who's going to go the dark side route for mounting tires on bike rims. Back in the day, when I worked a seven-day-a-week, nine-hour-a-night shift at Sam's Shell full service gas station on the corner of 27th Ave. and 169th St. in Miami, we had a device that was like a heavy duty, canvas wrapped bike tube with cinch straps that we would wrap around the center of the tire's tread face BEFORE trying to set the bead. By pulling in on the middle of the tread face (by inflating the small tube) you are forcing the side walls outwardly. I can't help but think that this idea could be modified to the use of a hefty ratchet strap around the tire, cinch it up and then apply the air pressure. After the bead pops you lower the pressure and de-ratchet the strap. I used to use a rope when doing this job at home in my teens, but it's a chore to get the rope off any way except by cutting it. "Penniless is as penniless does" however.

What with inflation (get it?) there's my six cents worth.

Jack

Actually the ratchet strap idea does work, at least it did when I was trying to seat the bead on my wheel barrow rim.