lol … whacking stuff w/a hammer to make it works seems to be some kind of natural law …
George, time to man up and buy a new tire for that rim
Throw that 40 year old spare tire away 
That’s where it belongs 
:
Don’t spoil George’s fun @db4690. He may be blowing off decades of pent up wrath from frustrations dealing with long discarded beaters. With the proper hammer and music,
what looks like a futile waste of time might be a psychological and spiritual catharsis for the man.
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It’s been a complicated political season. I guess hammering on an old spare tire is as good a remedy as any.
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Ok, whacking that tire with the hammer is reminiscent of Thor, but Wagner? it’s all a little too, too, too Teutonic … lol … for a fancy Mercedes wheel maybe, but for a steel wheeled Ford, not so much. How 'bout Neil Young instead
“Bruce Berry was a working man
He used to load that Econoline van
A sparkle was in his eye
But his life was in his hands”
Neil, if those Econoline van tires start leaking, I got the solution …
In the interest of science, but mostly for fun, I recently tried various ways to remove a tire from a rim. 15 inch truck tire in this case. Not such an easy thing to do. Squeezing the tire between a pair 4 x 4’s w/pipe clamps , didn’t work. I did knock myself upside the head with a 3/4 inch iron pipe tho … lol … Hammering the bead with a hammer and end-on 2x4, didn’t work. Same thing w/other hammering methods, none of those worked.
What finally worked was a big C-clamp. 8 incher. To get the jaw to fit over the tire and align with the beads, I positioned the tire vertical, then laid on the C-clamp with all my weight to compress the rubber enough so both ends of the clamp were aligned with the beads on each side. I discovered tho it is better to push one bead off at a time, so I used a length of 1 x 4 across that part of the rim to give stability to one side of the clamp, and the other side of the clamp directly on the bead. Screwed the clamp down, the tire bead gave up its hold. It’s still quite a job getting the tire off the rim, but I eventually got it off using a tire iron, big screwdriver, and a 2 x 4.
So such a thing is indeed possible. But I got to wondering, what if you had to do this in the outback for some reason. You probably have no 8 inch C-clamp.
Just curious: Besides stuff you could find in the woods, rocks and limbs and stuff, what’s the minimum set of tooling you’d need to get a tire off a rim by yourself?
When I was a teen I used a bumper jack to break the beads, the jack base is shaped similar to the fixture on the Coats 2020 machine.
I would like to buy an old tire machine, there must be thousands of obsolete tire machines around but I see nothing on Craig’s list.
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I usually lay the tire right in front of the front tire on the drivers side of a vehicle . Put a few layers of cardboard or something under it if you’re worried about scuffing the wheel . With the window down & leaning slightly out the door so you can see , you can drive right up on the tire with the vehicle . Run over the tire as close to the rim as you can . Occasionally you’ll have to run over it 2 or 3 times turning the tire a little each time . Usually it’ll pop right loose . Flip it over & do the same to the other side . This will break the beads loose & you’ll need some type of pry bars to get the tire off the rim . Of course this wouldn’t work if you was out in the boonies & didn’t have a vehicle except one with a flat .
The problem with some of the methods listed above to debead a tire off a rim is that some result on crushing the steel belt which will cause it to kink. Hopefully those methods are used only when a tire is being replaced and not when the tire is intended to be reused.
Also, I make a habit of slicing the sidewall of any tire I take off so it can not be reused. I don’t want unscrupulous people selling those tires to unsuspecting customers.
Good point CapriRacer . … the tire I was experimentally de-beading wasn’t serviceable, so I wasn’t concerned with damaging it. The c-clamp method and some of the others mentioned I think could indeed damage the tire if proper precautions aren’t taken. If you wanted to reuse the tire you’d have to figure out a way to spread the force on the bead over a larger area than just the 3/4 inch diameter circular foot of the c-clamp.
There’s one internet method where they put the end of a 2x4 on top of the tire, the 2 x 4 radially oriented so it pointed toward the center of the wheel. ,The end of the 2x4 was positioned exactly at the edge of the bead. Then they drove a car up that 2x4 like it was a ramp, and the weight of the car pressed the tire off the bead pronto. I think that would probably be a better way to debead a tire in the boonies, if you wanted to minimize the risk of damaging it.
Some more experimental progress to report on diy’er tire de-beading and rim-leak fixing.
Tire de-beading for the drive-way diy’er
The best way I’ve found using a series of trial and error experiments for a driveway diy’er to de-bead a tire is based on Nevada’s idea above. First step is to remove all the air from the tire, either by unscrewing the inner tire valve gadget, or just cutting the valve stem off. There can’t be any residual air pressure at all left in the tire. I then used a jack to push down on the bead, with the jack situated between the tire and something above that won’t move, like a vehicle’s bumper or frame. I tried it with a small hydraulic bottle jack, and my truck’s frame, but that didn’t work. The bottle jack had the proper foot shape, but not enough vertical range. For 15 inch truck tires I need about 8-9 inches of jacking range to successfully de-bead. The bottle jack had maybe 6-7 inches. What worked was a small scissors jack. It had a nice wide foot to press evenly on the bead, and enough range of movement to press the tire plumb off the bead. Anyone crazy enough to try this, I found it’s helpful to first soak the bead area overnight with a little transmission fluid. I think this scissors jack de-beading idea is probably about as good as I’ll find for me as a driveway diy’er, as it is easy enough to do, doesn’t require any expensive equipment, and is pretty gentle on the tire.
Getting the tire separated from the rim after the de-beading isn’t a simple matter either. I don’t think I’ve found the best method yet. How I do it so far, first I lay the tire on the ground so the side opposite the air valve is up. I push the tire with my hands in one direction as best I can to make a little space between the rim and the tire, then use two or three tire irons or big screwdrivers to lever one edge of the tire off the non-air-valve side. A Wonderbar tool can be a big help for that part. Then I turn the rim over so the tire valve side is up, and insert some kind of levering device from the bottom and up and over the (now) top edge of the rim. Then I stand with one foot on the rim, and pull on the lever. It’s not quite as simple as all that, it’s actually quite a struggle between man and tire, but that’s the basic idea.
Not sure what the best strategy is for that last part. Inside of the tire, the rim isn’t symmetrical. I think that’s the key, but I don’t know how to take advantage that fact. In the direction across the rim, inside the tire, there’s a deep valley which is much closer to one side of the rim than the other side. Any ideas how to use this asymmetry to make it easier to separate the de-beaded tire from the rim?
Rim-leak repair for the driveway diy’er. without removing the tire from the rim
So far the best results I’ve had is to use compressed air to blow all the debris from the bead area, then soak the bead area overnight in transmission fluid. How I do that, I level the tire using shims etc, then carefully (to avoid making a mess) pour about 2 tablespoons from a paper cup around the tire bead. I used Mercon V if that makes any difference. Then after it sits overnight I straddle the rim, my feet on the tire, and walk on the tire all the way around. Somehow this fixed the spare tire rim leak I had. I’m guessing what happens is the tranny fluid causes the bead rubber to swell a little, which, along with walking on it to flex it a bit, seals the bead.
Disclaimers
I can’t speak to the safety issues of any of these methods. Jacking and levering is always a potentially dangerous thing, and who knows how much, if any, damage is done to the tire. And none of this makes any sense to do at all unless you are stuck in the boonies and have no other way to do it. Take it to a tire store instead. Or instead, like me, you just want to see if you can.
I have used the drive up on a 2X4 method to dismount tires for many years and I still have my old tire irons. I also have a little of a product called NoRimRust that is more than 40 years old from my trucking days. It served as a lubricant and a bead sealer for 18 wheeler tires. I have an old Scotts by John Deere riding mower that I needed to dismount on the tractor because the wheel is locked on the axle with rust and I used 3 large C clamps to break it from the bead.
In the domain of improvised methods, the C-clamp seemed to work best for me. I’ve since purchased an inexpensive tire-changing machine from HF and use that now.