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My truck spent a good portion of its service life in a fire dept. The body of the truck is painted the really bright yellow of a fire truck, and surprisingly it looks good. The rims are painted the same color, and they are pretty beat looking, and bright rims don't do much for me. I am thinking of completely stripping them and using an etching primer and semi gloss black wheel spray paint from Eastwoood on them. My question is, is there any reason not to paint all surfaces of the rim and lock ring? Would painting the rim/ring interface be potentially unsafe by limiting the rings hold on the rim?

My thought would be that as long as you paint the rims when they are assembled...you will have little change of painting anything that will prevent a good seal of the locking ring.

-T

I sandblasted and completely painted all 5 of mine without issue.

I sand blasted mine and painted them and they were fine. However, when you finish sandblasting look at how much pitting is in the lock ring groove and check the rim for out of roundness from being beat on when the tire was removed. I had to reject about 3 out of every 5 rims for these reasons.

If you sandblast a rim with the tire still on it be sure to plug up the gap in the ring. I failed to do this on one of my wheels and the media got into the tire and caused a flat the next time I drove the truck.

...yeah, only I could be dumb enough to do such a thing, but I thought I'd post this just in case

I am pretty sure I will pull the rims and remove the tires for painting. I'd like to inspect them and get paint on all surfaces to stop any rusting. I have never dealt with these rims though, and I am not sure how tough they are to split. I have seen a couple of youtube videos of it being done. Hopefully I can do it without marring the paint to badly or killing myself during inflation. I have plenty of chain to wrap the wheels with, but I need to get a locking chuck and remote pressure gauge.

Getting the tires off is the hardest part. Even with a tire machine it's miserable because the rubber vulcanized to the rims. Several hits with a tire hammer is the way but it's a lot of work! I was getting new tires and tried using my backhoes teeth to get the tires separated from the rim and no luck

Putting them on is easy, just set the ring all the way by kicking it on with your heels, tap around the edge inward with a hammer to finish setting it, wrap with chain, remote chuck, I put soapy water on the beads of the tire. Regulate your compressor down to the psi your using so you don't have to try and figure where you are pressure wise. Tire slides right into place without much fanfare. Air up to 30, deflate then air up to 40. Make sure the ring gap is 180 degrees off the valve stem.

Tuko, My tires were pretty much unused when I bought the truck in Nov 2009. The fire dept I bought it from had pulled the batteries out of it to use in the Humvee that replaced it and it sat for two years with brand new tires on it. Do the tires adhere to the rim quickly, or does it take a long time? They have been on there seven years, but I have only recently worn the moulding nipples off of the tread.

I can't say for sure, the 8 I have dealt with were on the rims for at least 30 years. Sounds like you may have better luck then me!

I'm painting mine now, just finished primering them.

My tire guy said it's really important to keep each ring with the tire that it came off of. Not sure why, but that's what he said.

Thanks for the 180-degree from valve stem tip.

When they are new, they are completely painted.

Hey there folks,

I did some research looking for Bead Breakers that Truck Mechanics use.
Spoons are the best way to go, but they are pretty expensive.

I did manage to find a Hand Tool for this job.
This is the Ken Tool, T 26 A
It was 40 bucks to buy it here in Ontario.

I used it and a 25 LB sledge to remove a 1951 Goodyear tire from the original BUDD rim.

The tire came off in one piece, the rim was left perfectly in-tact.
It tool a heck of a pounding, but it beat my first attempt using my F150 to drive over the edge of the tire, then cut it off with a reciprocating saw.

Other guys have tried angle iron, or steel bars as well.
This is curved for the rim and works its way between the bead and rim.
Sure feels good when you pull the tire off let me tell you.

I've taken in 13 to be pulled apart had success with 12 of them. Sand blasted 7 of the 12, repainted 5 of these with the etching primer and something called "machine" paint. You don't need an activator for machine paint. As long as you wait 2 days for the topcoat to dry, everything seems to work fine. I always just use the local Les Schwab tire store. The'll dismount old stuck ones and re assemble the cleaned up ones. Are the west coast only? Donno' Pretty handy though.



-jim lee

We have Les Schwab's here in Utah but they won't touch Budd wheels.
Gary

That there is a mighty stout cloths line Jim!!!