Tubeless Mower Tires for Dummies

Inflating a tubeless tire

We like to think we do our homework here at the Antisocial Network, which includes following reference links and doing some biographical research on our DotD candidates. We don't have access to NSA databases, but we like to think we have some skill at ferreting out the bull. We picked today's nominee, GardenGuides.com writer Ma Wen Jie, on the basis of a lousy job of explaining "How to Change a Tubeless Mower Tire." Little did we know at the time that "Mr. Ma," who looked suspiciously western in his byline photo, originally published it under the name Christopher Earle.

Regardless of the name, Ma or Earle had zero idea what he was talking about. You can tell that because he cited two references, one of which was an eHow.com post and the other of which was some dude's personal blog. Now, if Christopher/Jie had paid any attention to the eHow post written by Jody Campbell, he might not be featured here today.

Unfortunately, he didn't: here, word for word, are the first two steps in Christopher's instructions:

Remove the valve from the tire stem to allow all air to flow out of the tire. Wrap a ratcheting cargo strap around tread of the tire in the center of the tread. Tighten the strap until the center of the tire is pressed fairly close to the inner rim. This will help remove all air in the tire and will reduce some of the tension on the sidewall beads. We'll buy the bit about removing the valve, although we suspect removing the valve core might be less work. It is, however, step number 2 that caught our attention. You see, the trick of using a ratcheting cargo strap on a tire isn't anything new: in fact, our sister blog The Fixit Zone published a how-to for inflating tubeless tires using the exact same trick.

The problem with Earle's "instruction" is that using the ratcheting strap doesn't "reduce some of the tension on the sidewall beads": it seats the beads so the tire seals to the rim. In other words, that should be the last step before inflating the tire, not the first one in taking it off!

The problem? Chris thought that the instructions he found on some blogger's website was for removing a tire, but they were actually for installing a tire. Truth be told, he did a pretty lousy job of rewording Campbell's post, but the errors there are more procedural.

Whatever the case, any poor fool who tried to follow Earle's (Ma's?) instructions for removing a tubeless tire from a lawnmower, wheelbarrow, or other small wheel would be stymied by the mistake our Dumbass of the Day made. Feh.

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DDIY - TIRES