DIY Beadlock tech

This seems to come up often enough that I thought I'd document how I did mine. The pictures I have are all of my set of 16s, but it is the same process whether you are building 15s, 16s, 16.5s, or 17s. I used 16x7 steel wheels. The beadlocks add about an inch or so to the width of the wheel, so I ended up with 16x8 beadlock wheels.

The first thing you need to do is determine which side of your wheels you need to put the beadlock rings on. This may sound stupid, but let me explain. On the inside of the wheels is a "dished out" area that is used to allow the tire enough room to stretch over the bead when mounting. The dished out area is positioned to one side on the wheel. It is nearly always off-set to the outside facing surface of the wheel. However, on wheels with extremely little backspacing (2" or less) the wheel may be reversed and the dished out area may be towards the inside surface of the wheel. The beadlock rings have to go on the side closest to the dished out area of the wheel. If you put them on the other side you will not be able to get a tire onto the wheel. This means that on some wheels the beadlock will be on the inside of the wheel, by the brakes. If this is not your desired result you may not have wheels that are suitable for making into beadlocks.

The next step is to take a grinder or wire wheel and clean all the paint, rust, and grime off the lip of the wheel that you will be welding to. This picture shows the area that needs to be cleaned, and it also shows the offset "dished out" area that I talked about earlier.

diy1.jpg


Once you've got the lip all cleaned up go grab one of your beadlock rings. Take a look at the edges of the ring. The edges on one side will be sharp and square. The edges on the other side will be slightly smoother and rounder. You want the shoother edges to be in contact with the tires, so lay the side with the sharp edges down on your wheel. Feel all the way around the ring and move it until it looks and feels like it is perfectly centered on the wheel. You also want to rotate the ring so that the valve stem of the wheel is in the middle of two bolt holes. You don't want to have one of your beadlock bolts interfering with your valve stem. Here's a picture of what you should have at this point.

diy3.jpg

diy2.jpg


Now that the ring is positioned where you want it, go ahead and tack-weld it into place in about four spots around the wheel.

diy4.jpg


Now find a comfortable spot to sit, and start welding. This weld needs to be pretty close to air-tight, so a quality weld is important. Most of the leaks come from where the welds start and stop, so two welds overlap. I try to make as few welding passes as possible. I can usually weld all the way around the perimeter of the wheel in four or five different sections. Some people say you should weld in many smaller sections to avoid heating up the wheel too much and warping it. That is good advice on many other projects, but I don't think there is any way you are going to warp your wheel, so to minimize the possibility of leaks I weld in as few different sections as possible.

diy6.jpg

diy5.jpg


This next step is something that some people do, and some people don't. After all the rings are welded up I like to grind down the welds a bit. This knocks off all the high spots and rough spots that make the tire harder to mount. Remember, when you go to mount your tires on these wheels the inside tire bead has to slide over this weld.

diy7.jpg

diy8.jpg


Next step is painting, and you already know how to do that... For the best results spray the bare metal with a primer before you spray your color. This will help the paint stick and last longer.

diy9.jpg
 

RockMonkey

Suddenly Enthusiastic
Assembling these things is a pain, with thirty-something bolts per wheel. So you don't want to put them together, inflate the tires, and find out you have a leaky weld somewhere and have to take out all the bolts to seal your weld. Take a minute now and smear some RTV over the welds just to make sure they seal when you mount up the tires. When you mount the tires, a lot of that RTV will scrape off. That's okay, any RTV that is plugging up a hole will stay in there and maintain the seal.

diy10.jpg


After the RTV dries, you are ready to mount your tires! Take your first tire and lay it on the ground with the side you want facing out laying down on the ground. Take your wheel and lay it beadlock side down in the tire.

diy11.jpg


Push one edge of the wheel into the tire and use a pry bar or two to work the tire bead over the edge of the wheel.

diy12.jpg


Once you've pried the whole tire bead over the edge of the wheel it will end up like this.

diy13.jpg


Now flip it over.

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Center the wheel in the tire and place an outer ring on the outside of the tire. Be sure to place the outer ring on the tire round edges down!

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Now you can start putting in bolts. I usually start with four bolts spaced evenly around the wheel and then fill in the spaces. They don't have to be really tight. Just tighten them all evenly. You will probably have to go all the way around the wheel at least twice to get all the bolts tightened evenly. There will be around 3/8s of an inch of space between the two beadlock rings when you are done. There may be more or less space than this depending on how thick the bead of your tires are. You may notice a bit of "coning" on the outer rings. This can be minimized by placing a V-belt inside the bolts between the two beadlock rings. I did this on my 15" DIY beadlocks, but did not bother on the 16s. They don't seem to have much of the coning, and it doesn't bother me anyway. I do not have the correct part numbers for the belts to use for the different sizes of DIY beadlocks, but hopefully someone will post those.

diy16.jpg


You're ready to put air in this thing! You may have to push the back side of the wheel into the tire while the air chuck is on the valve stem to get it to seal enough to seat the inside bead. I use a clip-on air chuck so I can just flip the tire over and step on the wheel to get it to seal.

diy17.jpg


That's it! It's a beadlock! You can now air down as low as you want without fear of your tires coming off the wheel.

diy18.jpg
 

BlackSheep

baaaaaaaaaad to the bone
Supporting Member
Nice writeup monkey!!

Only thing I would recommend is to use a bit of tire lube when muonting the first bead, and don't use a sharp pry bar to mount them. Use a Proper tire iron (minimizes risk of damage to inner liner and bead)



sorry man, I'm a tire guy.....
 

I Lean

Mbryson's hairdresser
Vendor
Location
Utah
Holy crap, you must have been bored today. Excellent write-up, Billavista would be proud. :cool:
 

RockMonkey

Suddenly Enthusiastic
BlackSheep said:
Nice writeup monkey!!

Only thing I would recommend is to use a bit of tire lube when muonting the first bead, and don't use a sharp pry bar to mount them. Use a Proper tire iron (minimizes risk of damage to inner liner and bead)



sorry man, I'm a tire guy.....
Where can one purchase proper tire irons? Does Harbor Freight have them? I'd like to get some.
 

RockMonkey

Suddenly Enthusiastic
I Lean said:
Holy crap, you must have been bored today. Excellent write-up, Billavista would be proud. :cool:
Yup, bored... Hey, do you have the V-belt part numbers for the different size wheels? Post 'em up!
 

troutbum

cubi-kill
Location
SLC
starting fluid

Nice write up :D

Couple of things I do differently.

I don't mess around with the air chuck foot on the back method, I just ether those babies. The neighborhood kids love it. :cool:

Also soapy water makes it easier to get the front bead in. Don't think it would work to well if you use RTV though.
 

RockMonkey

Suddenly Enthusiastic
troutbum said:
Nice write up :D

Couple of things I do differently.

I don't mess around with the air chuck foot on the back method, I just ether those babies. The neighborhood kids love it. :cool:

Also soapy water makes it easier to get the front bead in. Don't think it would work to well if you use RTV though.
Oh yeah. I left that out. I always spray some soapy water on the tire bead to help the wheel slip inside it.
 

I Lean

Mbryson's hairdresser
Vendor
Location
Utah
RockMonkey said:
Yup, bored... Hey, do you have the V-belt part numbers for the different size wheels? Post 'em up!

These are the numbers I've used:

Rim size Part number

15" 17395
16" 17410
17" 22445

I'm sure other sizes will work too. :cool:
 

BlackSheep

baaaaaaaaaad to the bone
Supporting Member
RockMonkey said:
Where can one purchase proper tire irons? Does Harbor Freight have them? I'd like to get some.

You know, I work mostly with truck tires, but I have used those same irons on my trailer and jeep tires/wheels. I got mine from Myers tire supply.....It is really just around the corner from pick and pull. Somewhere near 3700 south and I think it is 7th west. Can't find the number/address right now, but you can easily do a search on Myers Tire Supply and find it. They probably sell irons made specifically for passenger car/light truck sizes. They do have an online store.

Harbor freight might have them, but I would at least check out Myers to see what you're looking for. Although I don't know the Myers part number, the Irons I use are commonly referred to as "T-45A" irons.

Myers sells plenty of tire lube as well.
 

Caleb

Well-Known Member
Location
Riverton
BlackSheep said:
You know, I work mostly with truck tires, but I have used those same irons on my trailer and jeep tires/wheels. I got mine from Myers tire supply.....It is really just around the corner from pick and pull. Somewhere near 3700 south and I think it is 7th west. Can't find the number/address right now, but you can easily do a search on Myers Tire Supply and find it. They probably sell irons made specifically for passenger car/light truck sizes. They do have an online store.

Harbor freight might have them, but I would at least check out Myers to see what you're looking for. Although I don't know the Myers part number, the Irons I use are commonly referred to as "T-45A" irons.

Myers sells plenty of tire lube as well.


are these what you are talking about?
 
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