Yup, I’m talking beadlock wheels.  IHRA Pro Stock cars, CORR trophy trucks and vertical wall scaling rock crawlers all use them.  But how exactly do they work and what does it take to install them.

When an IHRA Pro Stock car travels down the quarter-mile in under eight seconds or an off-road truck airs down real low certain physics take over causing a tire to loose its grip on the wheel often resulting in the tire falling right off the rim.  Beadlocks over come this physics problem with a separate ring bolted to the wheel, holding the tire tightly in place.  Air pressure is replaced by bolt torque to hold the wheel on tight… in less than ideal conditions.

When it comes to beadlock wheels you’ll need to choose a manufactured wheel or cut up a steel wheel and build your own.  For our rig we decided to go with Walker Evens 17″ beadlock wheels.  Born out of desert racing, with 30 years of off-road racing experience, and more than 140 off-road racing victories we figured Walker Evens knows a thing or two about wheels.  The Walker Evens beadlocks are cut from cast aluminum rated at 3,800 lbs with grade 8 bolts and holes for valve stems that have been set back out of harms way.  Walker Evens beadlock wheels are cut to order and available with custom back spacing.  We opted for a 3.75″ back spacing.

The items required to mount the tires onto our beadlocks and balance them isn’t a long list but requires a couple of inexpensive specialized tool:

• Valve stem tool
• Valve core tool
• Torque wrench
• 1/2” Socket
• 19mm and 21mm Socket (lugs)
• Ratchet strap
• Air source
• Rubber mallet
• Valve Stems (.453 rim hole, 1 ¼” long)
• 8 ounces  per tire of Dyna Beads in easy open bag (how to balance off-road tires with Dyna Beads)
• Valve core w/ filter (keeps Dyna Beads out of the valve stem)
• New lug nuts

This mod is about as hard as changing a tire on the difficult scale but it is time consuming.  Plan for about one hour per tire, bring a stool.

1. In our case step one… get the tires off the old stock rims.  You pull the valve stem core to empty the tire and use a hi-lift to push the tire off the wheel.  We punked out and took them down to Les Schwab, paid the $4 per tire and called it good.  After all this is how to mount tires on beadlocks, not how to take tires off a stock rim.
2. Grab one of the new valve stems and using the valve core tool, remove the core than insert the new core fitted with the filter.  This step ensures the beads we will use to balance the tire don’t clump up in the valve stem. The core simply screws in and out.
3. Insert the valve stem through the wheel and using the valve stem tool, pull the valve stem through until it seats in the wheel.
4. Place your wheel flat on the ground and work the tire’s inner bead over the wheel.  Sounds simple enough doesn’t it.  This involves setting one side of the tire’s bead over the lip and than hurling yourself through the air and landing on the tire forcing the remainder of the tire over the wheel’s lip…  This may take a couple of times… and it isn’t pretty.
5. Now that tire is on the wheel, open the bag of Dyna Beads and place the beads, bag and all, inside the tire…  that is all there is too it.
6. Stop!  Are you sure the valve stem is inserted? Are the Dyna Beads in side? You really don’t want to find you forgot to insert them after you’ve bolted up the ring…  It could happen.
7. Take your rubber mallet and knock the outer tire bead onto the lip the wheel so it sits on the wheel snugly and the locker ring will fit on top.
8. Place the locker ring on the wheel and hand tighten all 24 the bolts. Use a crisscross pattern and ensure you don’t cross thread any of the bolts.
9. Grab your torque wrench and start tightening the bolts in a circular pattern.  Walker Evens recommends first torquing the bolts to 10 ft/lbs than 15 ft/lbs and finally 18-20 ft/lbs.  Get comfortable this is going to take awhile.  My advice here is to really chase the bolts around at the 10 ft/lbs setting until they all are torqued…  It will take going round and round and round… and around but the work here pays off on the next two setting which will torque up much more quickly.  No matter how you do this, it is going to take time…  I’ve had dates that took less time than it took to get all 24 bolts torqued up correctly.
10. Ever wonder how to re-inflate a tire if you roll a bead on the trail? Well here is your chance to practice. Take a ratchet strap, wrap it around the tire and tighten it down.  You will have a large gap between the back of the wheel and the tire bead but the tire should be pressing down against the wheel. Using your air source begin to air up the tire normally.  Caution! Unless you have a crush on a doctor or nurse at the emergency room and want a reason to visit them, keep your fingers out of that gap between the tire and wheel. As you inflate the tire, it will slide out closing the gap between the wheel and tire.  You will get a loud pop when the tire bead finally seats itself on the wheel.  When tire does seat itself, stop inflating, remove the ratchet strap and finish airing up to the tire manufactures recommended setting.
11. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the wheels.

When you select your wheels, check which type of lug nut is required.  Our stock FJC wheels used a flat mag style lug nut and bushing.  The Walker Evens require a cone style lug nut…  of course.  We opted for the titanium colored aluminum racing lug nuts from Gorilla Automotive.  They are strong, super light and high on cool factor.

With the tires mounted and balances, it was simply a matter getting them onto the rig.  Since you have the torque wrench out be sure to use it…  According to the Toyota manual, lug nut should be torqued to 85 ft/lbs.

After care:

• After 25 miles, re-torque all your lug nuts
• Walker Evens says to re-torque the beadlock ring bolts every other week for the next six months.  No one said cool was maintenance free.

With the extra back spacing and our 2″ long travel kit our rig’s front stance is now 82″ wide…  great for stable speed, bomb down desert roads and play in the off camber stuff…  not so much for squeezing through gate keeps.  Every thing is a trade off…

No more shakes and shimmies, better gas mileage and longer tire life what’s not to like…

Spinning tires wobble if they’re not perfectly balanced.  To avoid having your off-road truck shimmy and shake while bombing down the back roads, usually means taping lead weights on the sides of the wheel until a bubble level reads top dead center.  The trouble with lead weights is that they are difficult to  place exactly right, they can fall off on an off-road adventure when wheels and rocks meet.  Additionally as the tire wears the weights are no longer in the right spot. Heavy mud terrain tires require a lot of weight in order to achieve balance.

We recently installed our Toyo Open Country M/T on new beadlock wheels and instead of the usual lead weights we decided on tiny high-density ceramic Dyna Beads from Innovative Balancing…  So how can a few ounces of tiny ceramic beads balance a 75 lbs tire?  Well for those of you who where eating pizza in Mr. Hand’s physics class when he covered centrifugal force, here is how the tiny beads dynamically balance a spinning tire:

1. beads are placed inside the tire (big space filled with air…  not inside the rubber…  just want to be clear) and sit at the bottom tire when the rig is at rest
2. as the rig begins to move the wheel starts to roll and centrifugal force distributes the beads all around
3. every time a heavy spot on the tire goes up on the rotation it pushes the beads down and away from the heavy portion of the tire
4. quickly the oscillation frequency reduces and the beads move less and less
5. when the wheel achieves perfect balance centrifugal force holds all the beads in place

These little beads will work on 18 wheelers, RVs, trucks, cars, motorcycles.  If it has wheels, the laws of physics hold true… Ok that’s enough but this will be on the test.

Checking the charts, our 295/70R17 E rated tires required between 6 and 8 ounces of Dyna Beads for each tire. Innovative Balancing sells pre measured bags so we order up a bunch of 8 ounce bags.  The beads themselves come in two sizes, standard and bigger…  we went with the standard size since they offer a couple of installation options but you do need to install their filtered valve stem core.

Since we were mount tires onto new wheels, once the tire was on the wheel we place one 8 ounce EZ Open bag of beads inside the tire cavity and than set the tire and aired up…  yeah that is it.  The EZ Open Bag is designed to open and release the beads the first time the wheel starts to spin.  Your other option is to remove the valve stem core and pore the beads in.  A clear plastic break-bleed hose works well  to guide the beads into the valve stem or you can buy Innovative Balance’s applicator (little bottle w/ clear plastic hose).  Just keep tapping the hose and valve stem  (or tape a pocket rocket to the valve stem) to keep the beads flowing.

Regardless of how the beads get in, you will want to install a new filtered valve stem core, unless you have a tire pressure monitoring system(TPMS), to keep the beads from clumping in the valve stem.  If you do have a TPMS, Innovative Balance said the TPMS will block out the beads without a filtered valve stem core…  but it also means you wont be poring the beads down the core…  You win some you loose some.

One safety tip from the Dyna Bead guys…  if you use tire bead soap avoid getting any inside the tire or on the Dyna Beads.  We did not use any tire soap so no worries.

So the million dollar question is…  do they work?  We took the rig out on the highway to see if there was any wobble.  We did not notice any wobble or shaking as we drove the back roads tooling along at 35 mph, starting out or stopping.  And at 70 mph the ride was smooth as a Ken Doll.  Not a jitter or shimmy from the steering wheel as we sailed down I5.  Big heavy tires are notoriously difficult to keep in balance sending them into a death spiral – Tire out of balance leads to uneven wear which leads to the tire becoming more out of balance, leading to more wear…  These beads dynamically balance the tire each and every time reducing wear, increasing mileage and ensuring a smooth ride.

So the next time Boy ask “when am I ever going to use physics in the real world”…  I have the answer and a smooth ride.

Update: after tens of thousands of miles and a second set of tires using the Dyna Beads we can tell you that we are very pleased with performance and will continue to use them to balance tires for our off-road adventure truck.

I love all the gadgets available these days that make getting to your off-road adventure a breeze.  But I hate wires dangling all over, getting in the way and generally creating a big spaghetti mess. Sure you can hard wire the gizmo into your rig’s electrical but than you can’t easily move it to another rig and you still have to route the wires.  So to satisfy my love hate relationship with gadgets and keep it simple I came up with the 15 minute GPS gadget wire-up.

Although I performed this mod using a Garmin nav which is stuck to the windshield, it will work with most dash or windshield mounted gadgets.

States have numerous rules of the road and one law that many states have adopted is the placement of a windshield attached gadget.  The nav unit needs to be placed in the  lower corner of the windshield (check your state’s regulations).  So in order to keep us out of trouble and allow my navigator quick access, I choose the lower passenger side but this mod will work equally well on the drivers side.

In order to run the power from the GPS  to the auxiliary power supply down on the console, we are going to run the power cable under dash, behind the glove box and up to the power source.  This simple mod will require a 10mm socket, a small flat screw driver, a couple of zip ties and 15 minutes.

Use a thin piece of ridged plastic (a popsicle stick or small screw driver will also work) to remove the bolt cover on the “oh my god” handle on the A-pillar.  Slide the screw driver  between the top of the cover and the handle pressing downward a little as it slides in.  After both covers are off, remove the two 10mm bolts holding the handle to the A pillar.

With the handle removed, the A pillar cover is held in place with two small plastic snaps.  Gently pull the inside cover away from the A pillar.  The snaps will release their grip allowing you to remove it and gain access to the dash.

Now that the top is exposed, we move on to the glove box.  The FJ  Cruiser’s glove box is held in place with a single hinge pin and two stoppers.  Open the glove box and slide off the hinge pin which is attached to the glove box on the right side.  After sliding off the hinge pin, press on the outside of the glove box’s sides, pushing inward, to allow the stoppers to come forward.  The bottom of the glove box is attached with an open hinge design and you can easily lift it out.  You should now have clear access to route your power code.

Run your power cord down from the top of the dash and over to the console zip tying it to keep the cord out of the way and in place.   Since we also use the auxiliary power outlet  to charge up the iPod we added a splitter to keep the power flowing to the GPS nav as well as any other gadget we might have on board.  To keep things simple we slide the power cord between the front console cover and floor covering rather than than removing console.  Remember we wanted to keep this simple and easy.

After the cord is in place give the nav a quick power test to ensure power is flowing freely, before buttoning everything back up.  To put your FJ Cruiser back together, reverse the process, setting the glove box in place followed by snapping in the inside cover of the A-pillar and than bolting up the “oh my god” handle.

This mod is not going to make you go faster, ride higher or improve your gas mileage but it will keep the power cords out of the way, lend to a neat clean appearance and allow you to worry less about anything getting hung up on your power cords.  Best of all…  the GPS nav is easy to see while still keeping an eye on the road as we find our way to our next off-road adventure.