Mount Racing Go Kart Tires on One Piece Wheels
Removing and mounting racing go kart tires on one piece wheels. These tips are what has worked best. There is a risk of injury when mounting and removing tires.
Contents
Steps
- Break down a go kart racing tire first. There are several kinds of bead breakers made to accomplish this task
- This task will be much easier if the tire is hot or at least warm. If you do not have an oven or tire box to heat a tire up, even placing the tire in the bright sunshine for a while will help.
- Deflate the tire and remove the valve core completely and place the core in a secure place as you will not need it again until you have a new tire mounted on the wheel.
- Determine which side of the wheel is the short side. Most of the time the shorter side will be the inside (side without valve stem) of wheel. Place wheel in bead breaker with the shorter side facing up. Adjust bead breaker to fit the size wheel you have and simply push tire off bead. Flip wheel over and repeat process on the other side.
- Get the tire off the wheel. There is a trick to doing this without using tire irons. It just takes some practice to get the hang of it. But once you do get the hang of it you will be able to remove a tire without risking damage to the tire or wheel which you will be risking if you use tire irons. With the inside of the tire, roll the top of the tire inward, making the bottom tire bead extend itself over the rim. Grab the extended bead and slowly work the tire off the rim until the entire bead has been removed over the rim.
- Flip the tire and wheel over and push the rim onto a piece of carpet at about a 45 degree angle. Hold rim with your left hand and use your right palm to slowly work the outside bead over the inside surface of the rim. This method does take some practice to get the hang of it. If you can't get the tire off using this method then here's how to do it using tire irons, or, heaven forbid, screwdrivers.
- Make sure that after breaking both beads, place the wheel on a piece of carpet with the valve side down. Push one edge of the tire to the narrow middle section of wheel. Take the tire iron and place it on the other side and pull down. Take the other tire iron and do the same thing. Once you have about half of the bead over the rest of the tire should pull over by hand, flip the tire and wheel over and the other edge can be pulled off by hand. Be very careful not to mess up the edge of rim or the bead of tire if using tire again. If you are tossing tire, you don't have to worry about that.
- Mount the tire. To accomplish this task you will need a tire mounting ring or tire band as they are sometimes called. There are two basic types, one is a Ratchet style tire band and the other is a Screw type tire band. You will also need an air compressor, of course. Use a compressor with at least a {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} tank on it. Before starting to inflate tire release some air until compressor kicks on, that way tank is completely full.
- Heat the tire if you have a way to do so. Heat simply makes the rubber softer, thus easier to stretch.
- Make sure the valve core is removed from the wheel. Do not forget this! Identify the smaller edge of the wheel rim. Most of the time this will be the inside edge of the wheel. Most Douglas wheels have equal size lips but if you look closely one lip is thinner than the other and the edge is more rounded. This smaller edge is the edge you will slide tire over first.
- Use something slippery to lube up the edges of wheel and tire, such as tire snot, dishwashing liquid, Simple Green, WD-40,and Greased Lightning. Avoid getting lube on the inside of tire as much as you can. Place the wheel on a mat or piece of carpet between your knees. Hold the tire like you would a steering wheel and push it against wheel at about a 45 degree angle so that the bead contacts the wheel at 2 points. Now push the tire on to the wheel. The first few times you do this you will most likely be using brute force to accomplish this step. After you have done this several times you will figure out the trick and you will be able to do this without breaking a sweat. Flip the tire and wheel over and repeat process for other side.
- Place the tire and wheel in the tire mounting ring. Then, either turn the knob or use a ratchet to secure tire band around tire. Never use band with open end facing up and your face right over it. If the tire blows, your face is toast.
- Lay the tire band on the floor on its side with open ends facing left and right instead of up and down. With everything out in front of the open ends, and both edges of wheel and tire lubed up. Connect and begin pumping the air to it. When tire seals on bead you will hear a very loud POP. Do not stop pumping air when you hear the first pop. Keep pumping air to it until you hear the second POP. Release air as soon as you hear the second POP. And since you remembered to remove valve core, all air will release immediately. You probably do not even want know how much air was in tire when second bead pops on.
- Put valve cores back in wheels and inflate tires to a middle pressure that you run. Now would be the time to balance your wheel.
Tips
- As you know, there are several brands of racing go kart tires such as Dunlop, Vega, Maxxis and others. Some brands of racing go kart tires will mount with less effort than others, and a softer tire is much easier to mount than a hard one. There are several types and brands of go kart wheels as well.
Warnings
- This is extremely dangerous. Unless you know what you are doing, best let an expert do this job for you.
