ritzblitz

Ok, so my situation is that I want to refinish my 3 piece wheels before I put new tires on.

I don't want to go to the tire place and pay them to remove tires. Can I just deflate my tires and disassemble the wheel halves?

931guru

There's cheap and there's stupid cheap.

Spend the money.

black944 turbo

Agreed, DO NOT DISASSEMBLE THE WHEELS!!!! If you do you will have leakage problems, if not put back together properly.

ritzblitz

Well, I'm going to be refinishing them anyway. So they will be disassembled regardless.

PorscheDoc

Good luck breaking the bead.

MAGK944

My advise: Get a tire shop to remove the tires, it's very cheap. If you have refinished wheels before then go ahead. My first attempt was my last. After carefully separating the wheels, cleaning, sealing and assembling, I still had leaks and took them to a specialist. This was after I paid for new nuts, bolts and special tools to do the job. IMO it is a specialist process best left to a pro or to someone who knows what they are doing and does them all the time.

If you are determined to have a go yourself, this article on BBS's was written by a pro: http://www.the-polisher.com/id6.html

Wallace

If they were 2-peice you might be able to get away with not removing the tires.
Since they are 3-peice, you need to re-seal the rim halves, and you can't do that with the tire on.

Once the center is removed, I've read if you stick the barrel in the oven at low temps, it softens the silicone and makes it much easier to get the two halves apart.

In the article that MAGK944 posted, the last step is critical. Make sure you put a bead of silicone where the rim halves meet, wait 24 hours, and put another bead on. The reason for this is the silicone shrinks when it dries.

There are lots of good articles and info on rebuilding 3-peice wheels on vwvortex.com .
Sadly, those guys seem to more about Porsche wheels than Porsche guys do.

ritzblitz

Yeah I've seen a bunch of the articles on vortex. I don't plan on reassembling the wheels onto tires. That just doesnt make sense.

I think I'll give it a shot on one of them, but I think it will be difficult to seperate the halves with a tire on. We'll see.

Jay W

After working nearly 10 years at a tire shop I can tell you that the bead of the tire is gripping the wheel half very tightly even without the air. So even if you disassemble the wheel with the tire on, each wheel half will have the bead area of its side of the tire stuck to it. Then what you have is two loose wheel halves stuck on a tire. Think about how much pressure a tire machine has to put on the bead of the tire to break the flat tire off the rim. Now imagine doing that same thing with your hands while two wheel halves are flopping around. Much easier to pay someone six bucks to get that tire off the rim before it comes apart.

ritzblitz

Ok I'll take your word for it. Good call.

alxdgr8

A lot of tire places around me will remove tires for free...you just pay the enviromental disposal fee.

DarylJ

Probably because most of our bling parts end up on their cars