Ether for mounting tire?

[Bedlam]

I'm with the valve stem removal. I could never seat a tire without a tube with it inserted.Allot more pressure goes past the core without a stem.then I hold finger over the end and place the valve in with the other hand.
Sometimes with another set of hands as the air is going int he stem you can wiggle the tire around and hear the difference when it gets good contact.

[J_J]

This is just another one of those things that some will and some won't. This technique has been done for a long time. If you do it often, you get a feel of how much ether or lighter fluid to use. Do not use gas or propane, although you may get away with it one time, the next one will get you. Hair and eyelids burned off , red skin, eyeballs hurt something awful. can't see good. His famous words were d** I shouldn't have done that.

[RalphVa]

I always just removed the valve core first. Then you get more air flow into the valve stem to blow the sides out against the rim. Helps to soap or to put brake fluid around the bead first. On very small tires, I've had to strap them first.

This ether or gasoline vapor method sounds very dangerous.

Ralph

[crazymike]

I strongly advice against this.

I used to do this all the time. One day it backfired and caught my brother, severe burns on his arms and I lost hair on my face.

Invest in a bead blaster, use a strap. Don't use ether, ESPECIALLY if you don't know how.

Tire Service Equipment CH-5 Tire Bead Seating Tool
you can make this for about $40 in parts

not 100% safe, but a lot safer. This will work on any tire requiring bead seating. From heavy equipment, to a lawn tractor tire.

[Matt_Jr]

When I was a tire buster I did this a lot. Not as much now but I guess I'm a slow learner, 'cause even though I did this ether trick several times a month, it more often then not still takes several tries. I would lay the tire on the ground, valve core still in the stem, spray inside the tire and leave a trail of about 6 or so ft away as a fuse, and away it went. I used this when the bead blaster on the tire machine, Cheetah, or tire strap wouldn't work. I was nervous everytime I did it. Never felt comfortable. Guess that nervousness was respect. When I was at school we were showed a video of a tire under a car being blown up. The car went 15 feet in the air. We were showed pictures of men with their skin ripped off and killed in the video. Saftey videos can be gruesome. Despite this I still do this. What's wrong with us?

[Soundguy]

Now you know why I like tractor tires with tubes.

Spoon the casing onto the rim, fold in the tube.. spoon the other side ontot he rim, lube the bead with tire soap.. put air to it.. if the bead don't seat.. beat on it or just let it set a bit.. or deflate and reposition it a bit and air it again..

no hassle.. no missing eyebrows.

for large tires that are heavy.. remove the rim from the center if you have that option.. less metal to manhandle..

soundguy

Some interesting responses.

The main reason I thought to do this is, removing the tire/rim from the machine is a REAL pain in the hiney. I don't know what it weighs but I hate having to wrestle with it.

Regarding tire (rim?) shooting into the air from too much fluid... I kept this mounted on the machine. I would like to think that it not only made the job at hand easier, BUT safer in that, the rim wasn't going to go anywhere.

Also... I had never thought about removing the stem valve... I left it in and when the tire seated, having no weight on it to compress it, you would NOT have known it had no PSI inside. Meaning, I wonder if removing the stem is necessary? Any thoughts on those pros/cons?

I've tried the ratchet strap several times before. I've worked up a sweat and had a real workout wrestling around with that method, as well as having it take literally more than an hour before I was able to finally get everything lined up enough to FINALLY get some air to stay inside the tire (it simply bled out the gaps)

This technique... I was done in 10 minutes, although I will admit I was a bit .... well, I hate to say 'nervous' about it because I knew I was using too little fluid to light off.

I couldn't decide if I should just spray the ether in the tire and light it or, along the thought of spreading it around, spray the ether in the tire and SPIN the tire and then light it.

I tried the spin method once and don't think I used enough ether as literally nothing (audible or visible) happened.

[Soundguy]

Helps to soap or to put brake fluid around the bead first.
Ralph

BRAKE FLUID.. OMG.. what a great thing for the rubber!.. NOT

Vegi soap!!!


soundguy

[Richard]

I always just removed the valve core first. Then you get more air flow into the valve stem to blow the sides out against the rim

As I'm reading these comments about removing the valve core... I'm now beginning to wonder....

You mean you (anyone who's said it) remove the valve core so when you put the air chuck onto it, you can blow air in faster

as contrasted with

You mean to remove the valve core when you are spraying ether into the tire to "quick" mount it?

Or both?

[Taylortractornut]

Ive used this method since I was 15 working around trucks. Its great when you get that nail in your tire at 430am hauling gravel and dont want to pull off the inside dual. Its also great when yo uhave a stiff wall tire with rim gaurd like a skid steer tire. They are hard to get a jack under and hard cinch up. Sometimes on the skidsteer tires theyll be right against the bead but wont seat you can poke alittle down in the tire and light it and it will just burn then give the tire a kick so it will hickup a little oxygen into it and it will poof up there then the race is one to get air into it before the air burns up and a vacuum forms. When dad had his roll off service after school I d take either truck that had a flat to the tire store down the road and help fix flats. One day a log trailer was in with a low tire, it was an air ride trailer so they hade the lift axle up and they used a half can of starter fluid blew the poor tire across the highway.

[zionview]

I used to get roped into helping our mechanic seat tires. He used lighter fluid, gas vapors or anything else he could get his paws on to help seat the tires(we mounted some serious rubber-35" 12 ply Groundhawgs on the F-350 spray trucks, 44" and 66" floaters on the floatation rigs, and mounted them for other locations as well). Somewhere, he got ahold of ether with propane, 50/50 mix, in a aerosol can. We lit up one of the 66" floaters and it jumped about 3-3 1/2 feet off the shop floor. After the dust settled( and everything un-puckered), we got the forklift, put the tire back on the spray rig, and the ether-propane mix stayed on the shelf after that. Holy #$%@#$.