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beadlocks are the pain in my ass

olivedrabcj7

NAXJA Member #1384
I got these weld on locks, theyre welded "professionally" and the bastards still leak around the welds somehow. One of them is so bad i can stand there and listen to it and it will be flat in 30 minutes. can i take them back apart and smear silicone around the welded edge to seal them up? any other ideas as to what to put on them? I'd drive this jeep off a cliff right now if the tires would stay aired up long enough to get there....:explosion
 
olivedrabcj7 said:
I got these weld on locks, theyre welded "professionally" and the bastards still leak around the welds somehow.
Sounds like some questionable welding to me. If you paid for it I'd go back and tell them to fix it right. Since they're already on there it shouldn't take more than a little bit to run a nice clean bead of weld around them to seal any leaks. If they did it for free, that's a whole different ball game. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, right? :cheers:
 
I'm guessing they were welded with mig.
Damn near impossible to get an airtight mig weld.
Give them to someone who can lay a clean stick bead over everything.
 
My vote would have been TIG weld it

weld_alum_.jpg
 
LS1Jeep said:
My vote would have been TIG weld it

weld_alum_.jpg
Sure, they're nice but would take forever on a job like this.
 
also, the tire could contribute to the leak as well. My nitto's had some heavy ribbing on the inside of the tire that lays on the surface of the weld area that I had to sand down. I also laid a bead of black silicone and haven't look back. Wheel the hell out of it and drive it on the road everyday for 2 years now and not even 1 lead.
 
Well the welds look good except in a couple spots where he started and stopped. its mig welded. I only paid $100 for 4 wheels with the locks welded on and the lock rings and hardware. I'm not complaining. I have lots of time, little money and some determination.... i put some metal filler over those questionable spots but that stuff turned out pretty brittle. im guessing theres cracks in it thats leaking. any other votes for jb weld? is that stuff air tight? maybe tire patch glue? silicone?
 
when i worked at a discount tire we had a camaro come in that had trashed a rim and used jbweld to actually recreate part of the outside bead wall. it was functioning just fine with no leaks. so we replaced his rim for him.
 
olivedrabcj7 said:
Well the welds look good except in a couple spots where he started and stopped. its mig welded. I only paid $100 for 4 wheels with the locks welded on and the lock rings and hardware. I'm not complaining. I have lots of time, little money and some determination.... i put some metal filler over those questionable spots but that stuff turned out pretty brittle. im guessing theres cracks in it thats leaking. any other votes for jb weld? is that stuff air tight? maybe tire patch glue? silicone?
Like I said, it's almost impossible to get a mig weld to be airtight.
At this point the only real fix is to give them to a good welder. He will grind the current welds down and run a new stick bead. Adding any garbage like JB or (especially) silicone will only make it harder for him to get a decent weld.
 
ive found the leaks. its just one or 2 localized spots per wheel. i called rockstomper this morning and he said hes had customers tell him they put a healthy dose of black RTV all the way around the weld surface to seal up pinholes. ill try this and if it doesnt work, i guess i will wire wheel it all off and take them to a machine shop to be welded up good.
 
Daaaaa! isn't that what I had said? :explosion
 
It's definitely not impossible to get airtight welds with a mig... act like you know how to weld and you shouldn't have any problems.

I'm running Scott's (rockstomper) beadlocks... They're a little trickier to weld up because you're welding on that outside edge instead of inside a small "trough". I'd say just use a flapper disc to take the welds back down, in the couple locations that you found.. then just reweld over the top. Chances are, you won't have any problems at all.

__________________
matthew - 96 xj
formatt fabrications
www.formattfab.com
 
ive fixed leaks on dozens of beadlocks in the military by silicone apply let it set up a bit then install the ring allow to finish setting up over night al though ive also done this and it still didnt help in some cases
 
i mig'd mine and they dont leak, or they leak slow enough not to worry about. i'm gonna go with user error on your part even though you didnt weld em;) just grind down the trouble spots and go back over them.
 
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