From the June 2011 Issue of Car and Driver
When off-roading, it is customary to reduce tire-inflation pressure to enhance grip. This practice also increases the possibility of instant and unwelcome tire deflation due to an accidental loss of bead-to-rim contact. Reseating the bead usually requires a tire-mounting machine. But there is another way to accomplish this, a very dangerous way involving a combustible liquid, some means of ignition, an explosion, and possibly burning human flesh and/or acute embarrassment. You’ll notice that the instructions below are written in an expository fashion, as if we expect you to perform them. We do not. If you choose to, that’s on you.
STEP 1. Jack up the vehicle so the deflated tire is off the ground. If the wheel-tire assembly is removed, lay it flat.
STEP 2. Depress the tire sidewall to expose the center portion of the rim. Spray a flammable substance (starter fluid works well) inside the resulting cavity. There’s no need to saturate the tire or wheel; like habaneros, too much starter fluid can have a devastating effect on your well-being.
(Note: Any flammable liquid will work, including gasoline, but using that would just be stupid.)
STEP 3. The goal of this step is to ignite the flammable liquid on the wheel. This can be accomplished by throwing a lit match at the area, touching the area with a fiery torch, or—if you’re daring (and by daring, we mean an idiot)—creating a makeshift flamethrower by lighting a spray of starter fluid with the ignition source of your choice.
STEP 4. Get it right, and the gases will ignite. The rapid expansion of burning gases (also known as an explosion) will spread the tire sidewalls and reseat the beads on the rim surface. Any inkling of self-preservation you possess will cause you to reflexively flinch away from the blast.
Try to compose yourself quickly, though, because the explosion usually overinflates the tire.
STEP 5. Bleed excess pressure from the tire. Be careful; the escaping air may be hot. It would be bad form to get this far and then burn yourself.
STEP 6. Accept praise/emergency medical attention from onlookers. Note: If you brought eyebrow merkins, this would be the appropriate time to affix them.
STEP 7. Continue to enjoy life or carry on off-roading.
K.C. Colwell
Executive Editor
K.C. Colwell is Car and Driver's executive editor, who covers new cars and technology with a keen eye for automotive nonsense and with what he considers to be great car sense, which is a humblebrag. On his first day at C/D in 2004, he was given the keys to a Porsche 911 by someone who didn't even know if he had a driver's license. He also is one of the drivers who set fast laps at C/D's annual Lightning Lap track test.
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Gif: Reddit’s r/WCGW
Was 2021 a great year? Not exactly! But we did have some posts that did good traffic. Take a walk down memory lane with us, as we think back on 2021, a year that will seem much better by this time in 2022.
The internet is awash with people using a spritz or two of brake cleaner or starter fluid to bang set a bead on a tire. As you can see above, there’s a right way and a wrong way.
Getting a tire to mount right on a rim can be a challenge. Hell, I spent a week trying to mount my first tubeless mountain bike tires a few months back and found a lot of the same tips and tricks being used there as you find in the four-wheeled off road and stance car scenes.
The central problem is you want a tire to press right on up to the inside lip of the rim and kind of lock in place. Tires have a kind of raised edge right at the inside lip, and rims have a raised edge, too, on the inside of their outer edge. As you inflate the tire, its bead pushes out to the edge of the rim and forms its airtight seal. This is called “setting the bead,” and usually it’s a pretty easy job both on a bike or a car tire. Pumping up the tire with air is usually enough to set the bead on anything ordinary, and if it’s tough, slightly overfilling the tire with air will get you the pop ... pop ... ping! of the bead seating. Amazingly, I dug up some fantastically low-res images on government websites that I am free to use to illustrate my point.
Here you can see a fueleconomy.gov diagram of a car tire, with its lipped bead:
Illustration: FuelEconomy.gov
And here is how that bead seats into a rim, as seen in a NHTSA cutaway:
Photo: NHTSA
Sometimes, though, a tough tire on a wide rim will not quite want to work its way to the bead.
This is why you see people lubricating the bead with soapy water when mounting a tire.
It’s also why you see some people (particularly those in the off-roading world) use a ratchet strap to help set a bead. The idea in this case is to press the tire down and out towards the lip of the rim, doing some of the work for you before you start trying to blast air into the tire. Here’s an example:
And here’s a more low-tech example on a small tractor tire using a rope:
Both of these methods help you out if you don’t have a giant air compressor to get a huge blast of air in to really pop in a tricky bead. But what else gives you a big blast of air pressure? An explosion! This is the fundamental theory of using fire to set a bead. There really isn’t that much fuel needed to get even a pretty big tire to set its bead, as seen here on a Jeep:
You see the same technique in the world of stance cars fairly often, as people try and mount tires on wider and wider wheels. Even a pretty normal tire will need some help to stretch out and meet the lip of the rim.
Here’s Hoonigan doing it with a strong “don’t try this at home” warning a few years back:
Car And Driver also has its own step-by-step guide to using fire to set a bead while out in the field, with similar intonations not to do this. As someone who grew up in California and had to live through many a smoke-filled summer from wildfires, I, too, would not encourage anyone to do this while in a dry field or pine forest they happen to be Jeep’ing through.
As you can see in the videos, not a ton of combustable fluid is at hand. Too much of an explosion and you risk not just inflating the tire enough to set the bead, but enough to blow out the tire altogether.
That’s exactly what happens in this video uploaded to Reddit’s terrifying What Could Go Wrong subreddit. The video itself is overflowing with wonderful Brazilian energy, and every word in Portuguese uttered is dripping with confidence, even as the guy dumps basically a full Mountain Dew’s worth of gas into this tractor tire:
17,655 votes and 571 comments so far on Reddit
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I apologize that I can’t embed the video, as our CMS isn’t quite as friendly to my old hacks that would get anything in here.
I do encourage you to click the link above and watch the video.
The best I can do otherwise is give you a frame-by-frame.
Screenshot: Reddit’s r/WCGW
Let us first enjoy the optimism presented here. What could go wrong, indeed!
Screenshot: Reddit’s r/WCGW
A key element of this process is to slap the tire first, patting it as you would a horse.
Screenshot: Reddit’s r/WCGW
Here we can see a truly large volume of combustable liquid going into the tire. How much liquid? Too much.
Screenshot: Reddit’s r/WCGW
The guys hook up air to the tire — fire might set the bead, but this air is meant to keep it set and filled with air. Our hero in the blue jeans is making a safety trail of fluid that could have been longer, honestly. A few hundred feet would have been comfortable for me.
Screenshot: Reddit’s r/WCGW
Our second and only other safety measure is to use a lit rag on a stick to set things off. Ear protection? Nah. Eye protection? Nah.
Rag on a stick! You’re good, bud.
Screenshot: Reddit’s r/WCGW
Here, for just a moment, we see that this actually worked! The bead, as you can see in this frame, is set. Look at how snug that giant tire is to the bead. Perfection.
Screenshot: Reddit’s r/WCGW
And just one frame later, our failure is more than present. The explosion of the tire blowing out is enough to distort reality. Our protagonist has turned wiggly. I would not want to be an ear drum anywhere near this.
Screenshot: Reddit’s r/WCGW
Here, also, is a good view of the tire itself blowing out. You can have too much of a good thing.
Screenshot: Reddit’s r/WCGW
And here is our aftermath. The bead is not set, the tire is on fire, and the windows on the tractor are trash. We have now entered into a new calculus of wondering — would it have taken less time to set this bead using a non-explosive method than it will take now to fix the broken glass on this John Deere? We may never know.
Vladimir Gavrilov
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
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A08 / Shutterstock.com
Not all motorists keep foot pumps in their trunks. Many are limited to conventional electric compressors, which do not take up much space in the trunk and pump the wheels perfectly. However, they have an annoying feature. Compressors burn fuses in the car when connected to the cigarette lighter. Therefore, at the right time, this electrical device can simply stand in the middle of the tire inflation process. The wheel remains inoperable. How to bring the pressure to the values prescribed by the manufacturer?
The best solution is to find an assistant.
Usually, motorists are responsive on the track and help drivers in trouble. Asking for a pump or compressor is easy. Often truck drivers come to the rescue. Any truck with air brakes can supply dry air at high pressure through a hose with a nipple nozzle. Therefore, the wheels will be inflated quickly.
If there are no trucks nearby, and up to 0.5 atm is left in the tires, then you can drive to the nearest gas station and find the necessary equipment in the store, including a tire repair kit. The main thing - when driving, do not exceed 60 km / h, turn on the alarm and avoid sudden braking. Otherwise, a sagging and limp tire can be torn off the rim.
In addition to a shop with the necessary accessories, many gas stations have a free tire inflation point. It is very easy to use it. It is enough to fix the nozzle on the nipple, set the required pressure on the shield and press the green button. The pump will inflate the tire and then turn off.
When the tire is completely flat, you can put on the spare tire and continue on your way. However, in the absence of it, or if two wheels are punctured in an area where there are no assistants and trucks never pass, you will have to resort to completely radical ways to save the car from trouble. The most memorable way is to inflate tires with a fuel explosion.
It is necessary to remove the wheel from the car, find a puncture, remove a nail or other object sticking out of the rubber, and then screw a thick self-tapping screw into the hole, which will temporarily serve as a plug if there is no repair kit and flagella at hand.
Next, completely deflate the tire and disassemble it.
Then we pour about 50 grams of gasoline inside the tire, spin the wheel so that the fuel spreads over it, and wait for it to evaporate. Next, we make a small torch at the end of a long - about a meter - branch and bring an open fire to the wheel. Gasoline vapors explode and the wheel instantly inflates.
The more gasoline vapors exploded, the tighter the wheel will inflate. However, the nominal pressure of the gases is not reached. Perhaps there will be 0.5 atm., But this is enough to continue the journey to the gas station or to the tire fitting.
During this experiment, be careful not to spill gasoline on your hands or on the wheel. When a torch is brought up, the fuel may ignite and burn the tire. Therefore, it is better to keep a fire extinguisher ready.
Another piece of advice from the experts behind the wheel. They were experimenting with alternative ways to inflate tires. If you hammer a wooden plug into the exhaust pipe, drill a hole in the center of which and pass the hose through, you can inflate the tires up to 1-1.5 atm. The pressure in the exhaust system reaches 2 atm. True, on the side of the road it is difficult to quickly make an adapter from the exhaust pipe to the hose. It must be done in advance and carried with you.
Another way is more plausible.
If you find a long hose and fasten the tips on both ends with clamps, then with it you can transfer pressure from other wheels. If you release about a quarter of the pressure from each of the three wheels, then enough air will be collected in the deflated and repaired to continue moving. True, not every driver carries a spare pump tip with him.
In general, in order to avoid such painful problems with the wheels, it is better to throw a foot pump in the trunk that will not burn out and burn the cigarette lighter, and stock up a spare repair kit with a set of flagella and self-tapping screws. Then the problems with the wheels will recede by themselves.
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Contents
Modern car owners constantly come up with different ways to invent tires.
In all the variety of such methods, there are non-standard solutions to the problem that effectively solve the problem without a standard pump. Such activity is explained by the poor performance of standard compressors, their large dimensions and high price.
This method involves using a lighter, a piece of paper and a small amount of gasoline. In the absence of a lighter, you can use a cigarette lighter and paper to make fire.
To get 100 grams of gasoline, you can disconnect the fuel hose and then turn on the ignition. The fuel pump will automatically pump fuel.
To inflate a tire, do the following:
Such action should result in the popping of gasoline vapors, as a result of which the tire is inflated in a short period of time. The main thing at the same time is accuracy, compliance with safety rules.
It is important to make sure that it hits exactly under the rim and only a small amount on the rubber. Otherwise, the tire may catch fire. For safety, it is better to prepare the sand.
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To assemble a device that will inflate tires, you will need the following materials and tools:
Assemble the compressor for pumping in the following sequence:
The assembled device can create a working pressure of about 3 atmospheres.
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You will need a Carbon Dioxide Fire Extinguisher to build the pump. To use it:
The standard model OU-2 is filled with about two kilograms of carbon dioxide, which creates a pressure of at least 5 MPa. When you press the bracket, the contents of the container come out, turning into a gas. The wheel of any car is inflated in a very short period of time.
Despite the apparent advantages, such a device for tire inflation has some disadvantages:
