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Flipping Tires. Removing Without Damaging?

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I’m coming up on about half treadlife with RE71Rs, 305/30/19, and looking to flip them on the wheels. The one shop here in town that can mount low-profiles just told me they can’t guarantee a safe removal, saying the beads are often damaged. Hmmm. They have a $40K machine for touchless mounting and balancing...don’t know if that’s used for removing or not, but one tech said it’s a 50/50 chance getting them off undamaged. Obviously, I’m not letting them try! Are they incompetent or is damage a real risk? With tires this pricey, itd be nice to maximize their life. Any knowledge on this is appreciated. Thanks!
 

PatientZero

@restless_performance
825
865
Exp. Type
Autocross
Exp. Level
10-20 Years
Kansas City, Missouri
As someone who used to work at NTB and change tires, I don't understand how the beads would be damaged taking the tires OFF. That's a new one. Low pro tires are an absolute biznitch to put ON though and easy to damage the bead putting them on on certain machines.

I've never used one of the fancy machines though either, just the normal ones with the swing arm and spatulas

Side note, if they are used to doing 20"+ bling bling wheels with garbage chinese tires then the bead separation might be a real issue. I think you're probably ok.
 

Grant 302

basic and well known psychic
I’m coming up on about half treadlife with RE71Rs, 305/30/19, and looking to flip them on the wheels. The one shop here in town that can mount low-profiles just told me they can’t guarantee a safe removal, saying the beads are often damaged. Hmmm. They have a $40K machine for touchless mounting and balancing...don’t know if that’s used for removing or not, but one tech said it’s a 50/50 chance getting them off undamaged. Obviously, I’m not letting them try! Are they incompetent or is damage a real risk? With tires this pricey, itd be nice to maximize their life. Any knowledge on this is appreciated. Thanks!

Incompetent or don’t want the business. I don’t think even a knurled seat does any damage to a tire that isn’t old or dried out.

I’m sure you’ll find someone who can and will do it easily enough.
 
531
364
sfo
I mount and balance my own tires/wheels on a crap hunter TC machine. Flipping causes no damage unless your are an idiot. I'm pretty dumb and never screwed one up. That said what you can't do reliably is balance the tire. So don't bother. It is possible a street tire used on track that has not picked up track rubber or have tread peeling off it might take a decent balance. Race tires like hoosiers collect all the rubber on track and you can't get it off so you can't balance the tire. The rubber does melt off once on track and the tread is thin so so you don't really feel imbalance.
 
6,360
8,180
Sorry to revive an old thread, but I had this exact thing happen to me in IMSA. I had a set of S9 compound sticker tires that we didn't use and I took them back to the tire supplier to have them swapped out to the S8 compound to be used at the next race. It was dark when i.picked up the old tires. I just happened to put my hand on.one of the beads and it was destroyed. If they had made it back to the shop we would've owned it. Instead I told them to replace the tire. The rep said " it will still hold air".
I'm like, " Dude, I'm not putting that tire on a car that's gonna run 170mph, replace it, get your boss, whatever, but I'm not taking it".
They did.
 

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