Way to remove tire rims?

I recently started scrapping, and I have about a dozen old tires with rims in them that I want to remove. I heard auto shops will do it for $3 a tire, so that's out of the question. I read about some method that had something to do with a truck that I didn't understand, but I can't do that because I'm only 14 and can't drive. I tried using a grinder, but that didn't work. Any suggestions? I don't care about what shape the tires or rims are in afterward. I just want them out

The way I do it is cut accross it with a sawzall. You have to cut through part of the rim to get all the way throught the outter edge. Then lay the tire down flat and have someone with a car or truck roll over the edge of the tire to break the bead. If you cant get access to someone with a car. You have to cut all the way around the edge with a sawzall as clost to the rim as you can get on both sides. The tire will fall off. The bead will still be stuck to the rim. You can use a hammer and chisel or pry bar to break the bead.

708bigbuck-
Does that wear down the sawzaw blade very much? I know it wears down a grinder pretty fast.

Mick-
Yes, my dump charges money to dispose of tires, but I'm hoping that someone will come and take them for free if I put an ad on Craigslist for free tires. As for the return on investment, that's a good thing to consider

Cutting them is such a challenge because tires have tempered steel bands running through them for reinforcement. Let all of the air out of the tire by pushing on the valve with a screwdriver. Take a crow bar and press between the tire and the rim prying the tire off the rim. Do this all the way around one side of the wheel, then all the way around the other side. It takes a lot of effort!

Sounds like I have my work cut out for me. Ugh. At least I'll have something to keep me busy during the winter

If you use good blades, I've never had a problem with it wearing them out.

Thank you for your advice...HAH ...

I use my trust quick cut, which is a cement cutter, I just put a steel blade on it and cut right across the tire into the rim.

Drill a hole in the tire close to the rim then use a sawsall to cut around the tire. Cuts perty quick. I only do this for alum rims as it's not worth it to break down the steel rims

Here's one way of removing them.




BTW, can't tires be shredded and used as a base for roads or something? Why are they so hard and expensive to get rid of?

Originally Posted by Mick

Yes, they can and I looked into scrapping tires. There are large piles of tires around here and I was going to cash in. The problems are that the closest shredding plant is in (I think it was) Tennessee. The tires take up a lot of room for transport and they're worth so little per ton that a 72 foot trailer could not hold enough tires to even cover fuel.

You can buy balers for tires. They take a stack of tires, compress them, and then tie up the bale with wire. Al-Jon makes them, and I'm pretty sure other manufacturers do too. Makes shipping them feasible.

There's a plant fairly close where old tires are shredded and turned into stall mats and anti-fatigue mats, playground equipment, and a couple other uses I forget. A cement plant in the mountains here built one of their kilns specifically to burn shredded tires as fuel, but they had so many problems due to the wire in the shredded material always hanging up and causing fuel flow problems that they said screw it and went back to natural gas. I know old tires are also used as fuel for power plants, and I even remember reading about one power plant (believe it was in Texas??) that was built specifically to burn a literal mountain of tires that a guy had accumulated by allowing companies to dump old tires on his land (for a pretty healthy fee I'm sure) back when nobody else wanted or was even accepting old tires.

Originally Posted by IdahoScrapper

BTW, can't tires be shredded and used as a base for roads or something? Why are they so hard and expensive to get rid of?

What it really comes down to is that there are heavy strips of tempered steel inside of the tires that are **** hard to sift out of the rubber, and they make chopping them a nightmare. If they weren't there, then it would simply be a matter of recycling them like any other rubber.

You're right that they can be used to make roads once they are chopped up, but the cost of using tires is more than the cost of regular asphalt so nobody wants to do it

I'm sure there are teams of chemical and mechanical engineers trying to make it more economical right this minute! Maybe one day people are going to be scrapping old tired for big $$$$.

I agree with the irrationalist. That is what we do. once you do the first few, it gets easier. It takes some time to get used to it, but its free. sometimes you can sell a tire that has a little bit of a good tread left to a shop that sells used tires for like 15 to 20 bucks to people. i have a few around here, and sell my good tires to them. other times farmers who use plastic sheeting to cover bales and sileage might take a few tires to use for weight to hold down plastic. but yeah you will get left with the fee on tire disposal. get creative too. some that are usable donate to rawhide boys programs where they work on cars, give it some thought to try and keep your disposal costs low.

I use a demo saw with a metal cutting blade. I would not take the wheel unless it was aluminum. To me its not worth the time and tire disposal to cut a tire off a steel wheel.

This is similar to a log splitter design, but I have no idea what size ram, pump and engine you would need.

I bought a manual tire changer and mounted it on a wooden pallet. It worked 'as advertised' in this video. The very first tire I did took me less than 4 minutes.



The changer tool cost me $70 with tax and claims to handle 8" up to light truck.