Posted by Bob in N.GA [162.158.69.138] on Monday, January 16, 2017 at 20:54:26 :
Using some of the suggestions on this forum, I fabbed a press frame out of heavy duty angle and channel iron to slide the old rusted wheel and tire under. Then I placed a 12ton hydraulic jack with the base as close to the rim as possible--jacking down four plus inches--just enough that I could slide some little blocks of wood into the snug space between the rim and bead. When I released the jack, the pressure partially splintered the wood--so I used the rim bolts from another wheel for spacers. Moved about 10 degrees and repeated until I had gone all the way around. Then I flipped the wheel and did the reverse side.
With both sides of the bead now pushed away from the rim about 3/4 in. I loosened the ten rim bolts and the rim popped right off. Pulled out the deflated tube and boot, turned the wheel over and simply kicked the remaining wheel out of the tire.
This was so laborious and time consuming, I decided to do as suggested by others and take the other two wheels to a truck tire dealer and have him break the beads and remove the tires. Surprise--his pneumatic tire machine could barely push the bead as far as I did with the jack. We slipped wheel weights in for spacers as we rotated for each push. But the worst was yet to come.
When finished, we loosened the ten rim bolts and found the rims were rust bonded to the wheels. We banged, pried, and tried soaking with fluid--no luck.
So I brought them home and have soaked them repeatedly with PB Blaster and will let them sit all night. In the morning I guess I'll go back to the 12 ton jack and see if I can push the rims off from the back pushing on the tires like I did the first two. It's tempting to loosen the ten bolts up about half way and air the tires up again and see if 40 pounds will push them loose? I've got a clip on chuck so I can do it at a distance…
The first two I did had collected more than a gallon of water each--the primary cause I think of the corrosion…50 maybe 60 years probably helped too! The Good Years still have the Confederate flags molded in!
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