- What are we doing today?
Well, we're gonna be making the poor man's Beadlock.
What does that mean exactly?
This is inspired by Icon's Rebound Pros,
where instead of using actual
engineered hardware to hold the bead
from slipping off the bead seat of the rim,
we're actually gonna be taking these
one inch sheet metal screws
and screwing them into the steel wheel
which will go into the tire bead,
holding them on the steel wheel.
I think it's gonna be awesome.
This was inspired not only by Icon Rebound Pros,
but this was used,
and I don't know if it still is,
but is used in the drag racing world
and has been since like, the sixties or seventies
where the tire kept slipping around the wheel
because they were getting so much horsepower,
that the wheel would just spin inside of the tire.
So they would use these little screws
to screw into the bead of the tire,
holding the tire to the wheel.
So that's exactly what we're gonna do with you guys today.
(upbeat music)
(drill whirring)
(music drowns out speaker)
(drill whirring)
(upbeat music)
- I think what we're gonna do is now
just open up these holes just a little bit more.
What we're having is,
the first three went fine,
and then now, whether I press too hard or not hard enough,
either way, the screw heads are just breaking right off.
So, I think our holes are just a little bit too small
and maybe we just got lucky on the first three.
I'm not sure.
But we're gonna go ahead and grab a different drill bit
and open these holes up just a little bit more,
just so that our screws go in there a little bit easier.
(upbeat music)
- Well, half is better than none.
Now that we got it figured out,
took a little bit but,
(drill whirring)
that's trial and error.
(drill whirring)
Lookin' nice!
15 outta 16 ain't bad on this one.
(crew laughing)
(fast beat metal music)
(drill whirring)
Wow! These look absolutely hideous on here.
So, they do fit.
We were a little worried about that,
because the positive offset of the wheels
makes the tire sit back,
tucked in a lot further.
So we weren't sure if there was gonna be some
clearance issues behind the tire.
Now we are gonna have to be careful that
we don't accidentally maybe blow out a sidewall
and tear out one of the Falcon shocks on here.
So we're gonna keep an eye on things,
make sure we take it slow and easy,
and plus we don't know with these roofing screws
being as weak as they are,
if they're even gonna hold up.
I mean, the screws might break off
before anything even happens to the tire.
These Kanatis, I think I mentioned it earlier,
these Armor Hogs, they have a full steel construction,
so they're pretty tough tires,
and that's one of the reasons we wanted to use 'em,
see if we can actually tear 'em up or not
with our less than $10 Beadlock wheel system here.
So we're gonna check the tire pressure,
just make sure, we're at about 10 PSI or so,
(tire air blowing)
which we are.
Right exactly at 10 PSI on this one.
Yep, and this one is already at 10 PSI.
So that is gonna be our base point for pressure,
and we're gonna just, I don't know,
we're gonna try to find some things to maybe
drive over, maybe a curb or something like that.
Do some mall crawling, I guess,
I don't know.
But, what we wanna do is we want to really flex this tire,
let it fold,
see if we can maybe burp some air
out of these homemade Beadlocks to start with.
And then eventually,
what I wanna do is,
I want to get down to almost
no air inside the tire at all,
like run down to maybe a couple pounds,
maybe zero PSI in these tires,
and just see how much damage we can do.
If any, at all, maybe the tire will stay on the bead.
I don't know, but it's gonna be interesting.
And then when we mess around with these a little bit more,
we're gonna take the 4Runner with the Icon Rebound Pros,
and we're gonna air those down,
and then we're also gonna do
some of the same tests,
just to see the comparison,
which I don't think there's even gonna be one.
So, let's jump in here,
let's take it for a ride.
All right guys first test, 10 PSI.
I'm gonna back up to the curb just a little bit at an angle.
Now let me say this,
I wish we had a decent rock garden around here,
a decent off-road place to go
that we could really test these out.
I know you guys give us a bunch of shit
because we don't have anywhere to go
true off-roading around here.
The curb is really all we have for now
unless we take a trip somewhere up north in Wisconsin.
So, this is gonna have to do for now.
This is some preliminary testing,
but we will have these wheels long term,
so who knows what the future's gonna bring.
For now we're just gonna use this curb as sort of an example
just to see how well they'll work.
So we'll back up at an angle here,
just remember that's 10 PSI.
(motor revving)
So a little bit of squish,
a little bit of sidewall squish,
but being that these are a full-steel construction tire,
and it's a Jeep,
there's not a lot of weight hanging over the top
of these rear tires on here.
So, that's why we started at 10 PSI,
any more than that,
and I don't even think they'd squish very much at all.
(motor revving)
So we're definitely gonna have to
drop 'em down a lot further.
Next test is gonna be five PSI,
and then the next test,
we're just gonna let all the air out,
see what happens.
(motor running)
Getting her to squat a little bit more
going up at an angle like that,
and that's still at 10 PSI.
So we got a little bit more flex out of it,
looks like our homemade $10 Beadlocks
are working pretty good.
All right well next,
let's bump it down at five PSI,
because, and I don't even think five PSI
is gonna flex 'em that much,
I really wanna get these sidewalls folding over,
because I wanna see if these cheap ass roofing screws
actually hold that tire seat or that tire bead
to the tire seat,
so we'll drop down to five PSI,
but I'm guessing that even after the test,
after that 10 PSI,
that even five,
it's still gonna be too much.
(tire air deflating)
I had to go run and get my fast deflator out of the 4Runner,
that slime air pressure gauge,
you could barely see the little lines going down
into the single digit PSIs.
So we're gonna go ahead and use this,
because this is a lot more easier to see,
as you can tell it has the single digit marks on here.
So, I just wanna make sure we're about at
the tire pressure that we need to be at.
That's pretty close, about halfway.
In between the 10 and zero mark.
(tire deflating)
All right well, sitting at five PSI,
we're just gonna do the same test over again.
We're gonna back up at five PSI now.
We'll basically do a straight back up over the curb.
I feel dumb just driving over a curb
with low PSI because it's not like
we're actually off-roading,
but, you know what?
It at least gives us a representation of
if our $10 Beadlocks work or not.
(engine roaring)
(upbeat music)
I just wanna see once,
see how it looks.
Yeah, that's not,
that's barely even like,
I bet you that we can run these things
all the way down to zero PSI.
We need some bigger rocks.
(tire rubbing curb)
(motor revving)
(air escaping tire)
A little more airflow out of here,
(upbeat music)
I just let all the air out of the tires here,
pulled the valve stem cords, let all the air out,
and one thing I wanted to point out real quick is
this passenger side tire here.
Now, do you guys see how on the back side of the tire,
do you see how it's more folding out this way?
Like all of the pressure is kind of going outwards
this way, like towards the passenger side.
And that's why a lot of companies will only put
the Beadlock ring on the outer part of the wheel,
or like Icon Rebound Pros,
they put the pins on the outer edge of the rim of the wheel,
and that's because when you're off-roading
in most circumstances,
unless you're doing some hardcore off-road racing,
or some really competitive style type of rock crawling,
most times you're gonna have that tire want to
fold away from the outer part of the wheel and inwards.
And that's why the Beadlocks are on
the outside of the wheel.
Not very many circumstances,
unless you're really jammed up
in a precarious situation in the rocks,
where the tire's gonna wanna fold outwards.
Most time, it wants to fold inwards.
So, just like this one's doing right here.
So now that we have all the air out of the tires,
let's go drive this thing around.
(motor running)
Feels like I'm driving with the parking brake on.
(motor running)
I think it's just folding over.
It almost looks like the tire's starting to crack,
but it's not,
and the tire bead is definitely staying on.
In fact there's no,
well I guess there's a little bit here,
there is a little bit of separation from
the rim to the tire,
but it's not bad at all.
Now, I'm a little excited 'cause this is a lot of fun,
but do not, just don't try this at home,
and don't do this on the street either.
If you're gonna do this,
make sure it's an off-road only vehicle,
and we don't approve or condone this message.
So, but this is pretty cool.
This is awesome.
These cheap ass screws in these steel wheels
are actually holding on that tire bead.
It does help that the tire is all steel construction,
makes it a lot stiffer in the sidewall,
so it's not gonna be as likely to fold as,
like a conventional even three-ply wheel
that has the nylon cords in it.
But, this is working.
I think with this preliminary test that we're doing today,
I think this passes enough
that we're gonna take it to an off-road park
just about an hour north of us, Tigerton,
and continue our testing.
Now, one thing I do wanna do now,
I know I did say earlier trying out the Icon Rebound Pros,
but, I don't know if this justifies
enough of a test to even put those to the challenge
at all right?
'Cause, what are we doing?
We got a six inch curb here,
maybe seven inch curb that we're crawling over
with a homemade Beadlock wheel with roofing screws.
Now that might be good enough for this test,
as a preliminary test, just to try it out,
but I don't think it's gonna do justice
for the Icon Rebound Pros.
I think those are gonna require some
extreme challenges off-road.
So, I think what we're gonna do is
I think we're gonna go ahead
and wrap this video up for now,
as a point that this does work,
it can work, and it's a super inexpensive way
to make a Beadlock wheel for an off-road only vehicle.
Albeit, I don't know if this was gonna be
my weekend warrior,
where if I was gonna be taking this vehicle out
every weekend, or every other weekend,
or once a month, or whatever the case may be,
I don't think I would use the roofing screws again
because they are so soft,
and they were breaking off as we were screwing them
into the wheel even though we drilled pilot holes,
the pilot holes went all the way through the steel,
into the tire bead itself.
Even though we did that,
we were still breaking off these soft roofing screws.
So, I think if I were to do this again,
I would use some like grade 8 or better hardware
to mount the tire beads to the wheel width.
So, you know, maybe jumping on like JEGS
or something like that,
I don't know where you can find 'em,
but it's like tire wheel mounting hardware,
or wheel mounting hardware, or something like that
I think it's called,
where they have actual engineered hardware
to screw into the wheel to hold the tire on.
All right, well we're gonna go ahead,
we're gonna wrap this video up for now.
I hope you guys enjoyed it,
maybe gained a little bit of information from it.
It was definitely a lot of fun shooting this video.
We're gonna have a lot more fun
once we get up to Tigerton and start hitting
those off-road obstacles,
and really putting these things to the test
just to see if they're gonna hold up or not.
And we might even look at getting those broken bolts
out of there and replacing 'em with some stronger hardware.
And that's maybe what we could do too,
like, obviously we got these wheels and tires
right off of our website on Trail Built.
Even like these steel wheels,
now these are 18 by nines,
these were right around 350 bucks,
something like that.
Obviously, if you go with a smaller diameter,
you can get 'em even cheaper,
but steel wheels Kanati Armor Hogs,
I mean, obviously we got these right off of our website,
but the point is you can make cheap wheels,
cheap tires work on your off-road vehicle
to go wheeling with.
You don't always have to go expensive.
And if you guys are looking for a lot of good deals,
you can find them on our website at Trail Built,
and we'll have a link posted in the description below.
But guys, what I really wanna know is,
what do you guys think about this?
Like, have you ever made your own homemade Beadlocks
that are similar to this?
I'd be curious to hear back from you guys,
what you think, if you've done it before,
if you think this test,
or if you think these tires are gonna hold up
to more extreme off-roading,
definitely make sure and let us know in the comments below.
And guys, as always we appreciate all of you
for watching and all of your support.
I'm Josh from Trail Built,
and we'll see you guys out on the trails.
(upbeat music)