Gluing Your Tires To The Rim

Installing a set of tires onto wheels is a fairly simple procedure. The important thing to remember is to take your time and do the job right. When you're done, you'll be rewarded with a set of wheels and tires that will remain problem free throughout the time you use them.

The first thing you need to do is to scuff the wheels in the area where the tire bead will rest. A small piece of 200-grit sandpaper, or something similar, will work just fine. What you are doing is to provide a good surface for the CA glue to adhere to when you glue the tire to the rim in the next step. Be careful, and take your time. You want to scuff the wheel up in the appropriate location, but you want to avoid scratching any other area of the wheel so it continues to look good once you've mounted it.

While you can skip this scuffing step with limited success when using plastic rims, it's absolutely crucial to perform this procedure with aluminum rims. Otherwise you'll have problems with tires spinning on the rims, or slipping off altogether. The picture below shows the channels that the tire bead will rest in, which is the area you want to scuff up. Keep in mind if you need to air your tires, you should take care of that before installing the tires. It's much easier to drill the hole before the tire is installed on the rim.

Next you'll want to install the tire, and tire foam if provided, onto the rim. Go ahead and fit the tire beads into their proper locations on the rim. You'll want the tire to look as if it's ready to be mounted on the truck. I would suggest that you go ahead and mount all your tires in this manner before you start gluing. That way you can ensure that the tires are correctly installed as most tires are directional.

Directional means that the tire should be pointing one particular way only, which means that that two tires will be left-side tires and two being right-side tires. Once you glue the tires, it's a little more difficult to remove them because you found out that you have three left-hand tires and one for the right-hand side.

One the tires have been mounted and you have double checked to ensure they are correctly installed on the rims, you're ready to start gluing the tires to the rims. Using one hand, pull a section of the tire bead away from the wheel and apply some CA glue such as this bottle from Great Planes. Then you push the bead back into place, and repeat at another spot on the wheel. Do this around 3-4 spots on one side of the wheel. Then check to ensure the tire bead is still properly placed in the channel on the rim, and set that wheel and tire aside so you can do another.

Allow the CA glue to cure for about 15-20 minutes one the side you have glued before you glue the opposite side of the wheel. The perform the same procedure on the opposite side of the wheel. When that is completed, allow the CA glue to fully cure for several hours. Don't be tempted to go ahead and mount the tires on the truck. If the CA glue hasn't fully cured, you'll run into problems with the bead not staying glued to the rim later.

Then simply mount the wheels on the truck, and tighten the wheel nuts back into place.