Airing Down the Easy Way

For the last 20+ years that I've been doing the Jeep thing, one thing that was consistent, was the way I aired down my tires. I always just pulled my valve stem cores, and chased my tires with a pressure gauge. 

It wasn't the most elegant solution, and there was always the risk of firing a core into the bush, but it was fast and it worked. Unfortunately, on my last trip to Bobcaygeon, I spent a little too much time chatting, and ended up having to actually inflate a couple tires, because I aired them down too much. 

So....

While searching for Jeep "stuff" as I'm known to do, I found this tire deflator. It removes the valve core, but keeps it safely tucked in itself. It allows controlled release of air, and a handy pressure gauge to keep tabs on the tire. The kit included the deflator, four valve caps, a valve stem tool, and a handy storage box. 

Since pictures speak a thousand words, videos must speak millions. Here's a quick video showing how it works, and really, how simple it is to use.

AME 51025 Quick Valve Change Tool

Ordered in from Amazon

I had to deal with a cracked and leaky valve stem on one of my tires, and I wasn't in the mood to break out the tire changer to break the bead and dismount the tire, so I decided to try out the AME 51025 Quick Valve Change Tool.

It definitely lived up to it's name. 

Found at Princess Auto

The general idea is that you push in a hook and pull out the damaged stem, before using a funnel like tool, a gratuitous amounts of tire lube, and a plunger (for lack of a better term) to ram the new valve in from the outside. 

Despite not being able to hook the valve stem to pull it out, I was able to cut the stem off and push a new valve stem through from the outside. Surprisingly fast and fairly effortlessly.  Check out this video of my making the swap. 

I ran into further problems afterwards, and ultimately I did end up dismounting the tire to seal the bead with some polyurethane to stop the bead leaks I found (7 in total). I was getting tired of fighting this tire over the past couple years and decided that essentially gluing it to the rim was going to fix this once and for all. If you want to see me using the tire machine, here's a previous video I put together a couple years ago.