Foam filled tires/rims

Anyone ever try to save rims after the tires had been filled with foam?
Any luck/tips/advice?
Looking at the front rims for now, rears may need attention later.
Big difference in the price of front rims and rear rims.

I just turned down a skid steer with foam filled tires, and that was one of the reasons I did. Its nice until the tires are bald. These were 1/4 tread. He was talking it up like it was the best thing since sliced bread, until you have to replace them.

Dont be afraid of buying the skidsteer because of the foam filled tires. Once theyre bald, just cut them off with a reciprocating saw. the tires are junk anyway, and the foam doesnt stick to the rims. So cut them off, and have new tires mounted on the rims with no foam, if thats your preference. simple as that.

Royse:

When I worked in the Mines back in the early
1980's we foam-filled the tires on a couple of
Wagner Mobile Tele-Trams (large, long, articulated
dump-trucks with telescoping beds). After a couple
of years when the tires were worn down to the foam
we tried to salvage the rims to mount new tires on
them. We tried everything to get the foam off the
rims, even to the point of dousing them with
Diesel and burning it off. For what it cost time
wise, in man-power & wages, and down-time for the
machines; the Company finally came to the
conclusion that it was CHEAPER to buy new rims at
$5000. each than to salvage the old ones.

Doc

Everyone says cut the tires off with a sawzall! Ever do it? Its not fun. I set the whole wheel and tire(200+ lbs) on a bandsaw. I then cut a pie shaped piece out. I then use a cut off wheel to try to cut the last cords in the bead that you cant get to with the band saw. I then take the tire and point a chain hook into the plys of the tire at the cut and chain it to a tree. I then chain my excavator to the wheel, and try to peel the tire from the rim. Some tires arent bad some are. Just did a set of 4. Probably had 5 or 6 hours into it...They were the worst set I ever did

I run foam in the fronts on my JD 850. Last year I had to replace the front tires as they were starting to delaminate. They were old and pretty weather cracked when I had the foam installed about 10 years ago. I took them back to the tire shop that had installed the foam originally. They mounted the new tires and foamed them. They never mentioned any problems and there was no extra cost associated with it - the cost was about the same as it was when I first had the foam put in years ago.

The tire store where I get my tires foams tires. Pretty much every time I go there, there are some tire halves with foam in them outside the back door. I'll have to check on how they do it but you can see from the foam that is still in the old tires that there was no hacking away at it. They must put some kind of barrier film in them first.

You coat the rim with silicone before you mount the tire, when it goes bad you cut the tire off and the foam goes with it.

use a saw saw and cut the tires down to the rim on both side like two half moons and pull the two halve off like cutting a water melon no problem.just don't get into the rim.

How do you cut the cords at the bead without getting into the rim?

(quoted from post at 06:49:33 01/16/14) How do you cut the cords at the bead without getting into the rim?

Click to expand...

I used a cold chisel.

Royce, in the 20+years in the tire shop I had hundreds of tires foam filled for people. We cut the old tires off with a sawzall, this is NOT a big deal, cut the bead wires with a air chisel, again NOT a big deal, pealed the foam off the rim again NOT a big deal, mounted the new tires and sent them off to have them refilled. If the place you use to foam fill your tires is a big enough outfit they WILL want the old foam back. When mounting large, like earth mover, tires that are going to be foam filled they will drop the chunks of foam into new tire, when mounting it, and reuse the foam, Its called chunk filling. We had some people that were concerned about foam sticking to rims. If that is a concern, put a tube in the tire and have the tube filled with foam, but again, we never had a problem removing the foam from rims. We cut a v out of it with the same sawzall, then used a utility knife to cut to the rim, then the foam just peals off.

I used to cut off the really old hard tires just to save the rims. If you tried prying them off the rims would be ruined.
I may of broken the bead area down first then cut the tire with saws all and then with the bead broken down to the inside I could get the saws all in there and cut it. That was tough cutting but it worked out.

I have done this personally quite a number of
times. I worked at two tire and service centres
for about nine years combined. One was called
Maritime Tire and the last was Tirecraft . When
you foam fill the tires it's usually done with a
tube in place. That makes it much easier when
taking it apart. What you do is cut the
circumference of the tire all the way around on
both sides well above the bead. Then cut the tire
straight across to peel the tire and the foam fill
out. The foam fill sets up more like a gel than a
foam, so iy usually comes out fairly easily. Once
the tread and foam is out it's easy to knock the
beads down and cut them off. I use a reciprocating
saw and cutoff wheel as the tools of choice. It's
a dirty messy job but not terribly difficult. Hope
that helps, Joe.

That is more or less how I took care of the two front tires on my Ford 641D after the tires failed. They had been foamed several years earlier, but the sidewalls of the tires started delaminating and breaking, causing the tread to flop around.

The first one was a bugger, since I had to figure out how to do the job. I ended up cutting all of the tread portion of the tires off, to get that out of the way. Then I cut into the "doughnut" of hard foam with the sawzall, finishing with a chisel in a couple of places, which allowed me to remove the foam in 2 pieces. Then the only remaining parts were the beads and some of the tube. The beads just pried off with large screw drivers and the tube eventually pulled off. There was almost no damage to the rim at all, other than maybe some scratches from prying the beads off and maybe some little dings from the chisel. While I had the rim bare, I cleaned it up as well as possible and rattle can painted it.

The second one was much easier and took about a quarter of the time since I knew what I was doing and didn"t have to experiment.

Both tires got replaced with the heaviest duty tri-ribs I could locate, and new tubes. In my area we have lots of problems with thorns from the hawthorn bushes flattening tires. Before I had the tires foamed, I fought flat tires for several years, with my record short time between flats being about 10 minutes. I thought that foaming the tires was the ultimate answer, and it worked ok for maybe 5 years with no flats. But then the foamed tires both failed the same way--I guessed that they were designed to flex some and the foam would not allow it. I will not be foaming my tires again.

There are still lots of hawthorn bushes on my property. After I replaced the tires I didn"t have any problems with flats for a year or two, but then started getting flats. I added a QUART of Slime to each of the front tires, which didn"t totally solve the problem, but made it very manageable. I have to add some air to each tire every several months, but I have not had to break down either tire since I replaced them.

So in my experience, it is not a super easy job to remove the foam from tires, but it is certainly possible, if kind of messy. I saved my rims just fine and bet you can too. Good luck!

Thanks guys. I'll give it a try on one and see how it goes.
Worst that's going to happen is buying a new rim.
Which is going to happen anyway if I don't try!