Car Talk, a National Public Radio show, had a story about a guy stuck down in Baja, Mexico with a flat. He thought he found a place to fix the tire but to his dismay found out the kids there did not have an air compressor or a mount/dismount machine. To his surprise they somewhat manhandled the tire on and off with pry bars but seating the bead and inflating the tire is what fascinated me. To seat the bead they poured a small amount of gasoline inside the tire creating vapors and lit it. The rapidly expanding gases seated the bead. To inflate the tire they pulled one of the spark plugs and with a rubber hose to the hole cranked the engine. According to the radio hosts it's completely reasonable to get 60+ psi from doing such a thing.

I think such creative although maybe not always the safest ideas are interesting to post up. I'm curious to see what other ingenious ideas others have come up with to get out of a pickle.

Warning. Coarse language in the video.

Here?s a couple of links of using flame to set the bead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RupgxQdhww4

And of course gotta have a clip of something that just didn?t go quite right:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK6o8Js2nZE



Know of any ingenious ideas?



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You should post a warning with that....DO AT YOUR OWN RISK lol

What a silly careless way to try and kill yourself.

 

lol Yeah I know. That's actually why I put up the link with the yahoos in the second clip.

 

They showed the bead seat thing on Discovery a few years ago, during one of those arctic trips. Had to do it once to seat a tire that wouldn't set took a few times to get it right.

The spark plug thing is old too, can swear i have read or seen that somewhere before.

But all in all you do what you have to do huh.

 

My father still drives truck for a living and I remember being at the shop with him one time several years ago and watching the mechanic use ether to set the bead on one of my dad's trailer tires. Talk about a big boom! Scared the crap out of me and the tire flew about 15 feet in the air when the guy lit it. Like you said, it works but it is by NO means a safe way to do it.

 

Some guy posted a thread a few months ago asking if he could use a cylinder with a sparkplug-air hose adapter as an air compressor to fill up his tires like he used to do on his old motorcycle. While the theory is sound (that's all an electric compressor is, a piston-cylinder with something driving it) you'll have to consider that this puts an air-fuel mixture in your tire. That, and the air coming out of a warm engine will be HOT.

Still, pretty innovate idea and all. I wouldn't consider it for anything except EXTREME emergencies and I had no other options.

As for setting the bead by putting gas in the tire and lighting it, that's a very famous technique that's been aournd in the off-road community forever. You can also use flammable aerosols like starter fuid. I watched a friend try to do it once, he sprayed starter fuid in the tire and then tossed a lit cigarette next to the opening... nothing happened and the cig fell into the tire I suspect it's still in there...

 

15 feet??!!! Youre talkin about a semi tire right? Ive helped my dad numerous times setting the bead on his truck tires and ive never once seen it leave the ground. Not tryin to be a dick but 15 feet?!

 

I done it before and we used starting fluid... Its a last ditch effort, I rather have a good 12V compressor and use a good ratcheting strap to hold the tire down so it can seat well..

 

Growing up my father owned a truck tire repair business. This is the most common way to get the beads to set, Especially of split ring or large equipment tires. Although the spark plug was a novel idea. They are suppose to use a "cage" when working on these tires, not just because of this but due to other things like the ring itself not seating.

I thin 15 feet may be based on everything being larger when your younger.

 

Ok, ok, so maybe it wasn't 15 feet but I was about 13 or 14 at the time and already about 6' tall and I know I looked up to see it.

 

it would def be only a last ditch effort for me...

me, flammable liquids, and fire dont work well with each other

 

Great discussion on the setting the bead on a tire.

Anybody have any other stories or ideas of creative things? For example using the exhaust and a hose hooked up to a folded Coleman air mattress on a raised bed of dirt to lift the truck up enough to change the tire?

If you crack a wheel and still need to get a few miles to repair it, lashing on a tree limb to the broken wheel effectively dragging (and likely creating a lot of smoke) the rig on the limb?

How about warming up the vehicle battery in boiling water to squeeze out one last attempt at cranking the engine over in cold weather?

Maybe the possibility of using the air-up CO2 tanks for a vapor barrier and welding using the car battery and copper pennies?

I?m really reaching here but I figure there have got to be some creative albeit not ideal solutions for things people have done or could do to get out of a jam. I love the way the human mind can transform a little information to accomplish otherwise impossible feats.

 

I still have my sparkplug adaptor kit for my motorcycle.... they work great in filling a tire, used it many times.


http://www.stopngo.com/Contents/PQE1.asp

 

Wow that's a cool set up. Not bad for about $20.

 

Here's another idea that's a simple and good to prevent the knot getting so tight between straps that it can't be undone.



Probably common practice for many folk but I've often seen a clevis used to join two straps and that made me really uneasy. It seems like if the strap breaks that wood would hurt but steel would be a heck of a lot worse.

 

There was a tv documentary in australia called The Bush Mechanics a few years ago http://www.abc.net.au/tv/documentari...es/s359476.htm
They used to solve auto problems with some pretty inventive ideas, like filling a flat tire with spinifex grass when they had no air, using the log as a skid as mentioned before, but my favorite was when the fuel pump failed in their car, they hooked up the windshield washer fluid pump to the fuel lines and carby, and then drove on occassionally hitting the 'washers' knob to fill the carby bowl up.
They also did some pretty extreme things like chopping the roof off to use as a skid that they towed behind them with their band speakers and equipment on. Was a pretty cool show.

 

Bump.

Some pretty neat ideas

 

I welded a nut onto the toyota locking lug to get it off once in a bind. That was done using 3 car batteries and jumper cables and a spare welding rod i had.

Drove without a right caliper once. To get home after the right rotor shattered. The caliper and lines were just duct taped to the upper control arm.

 

Snow chains.. by wrapping rope around the wheel/tire (through the spokes).
Definitely not the safest thing to do... Careful with the caliper/drum clearances

 

Sweeeeet.