2 Big Broncos Rocky Mountain Site
Wheels and tires
Super Swamper 36 X 12.50 – 15 tires
Rock Crawler 15 X 10 chrome modular wheels
Parts from Four Wheel Parts Wholesalers
Since I was trying to do all of this work myself, and hopefully save a couple bucks along the way, I got my tires and wheels separate and mounted them myself. Since I already had a set of Tyrepliers and spoons, the installation went smoothly. The key to putting the tires on the rims was lots, and I mean LOTS, of lubrication. I used a pretty strong soap and water mixture, but a rubber lubricant would have worked better. The real tough part was inflating the tires. Since the tires are stacked flat in the warehouse, my 12.5-inch wide tires only had a bead width of 4 inches, and they were going on 10 inch rims. Swampers are STIFF, you don't just lean on them and make the bead spread out. What I ended up doing was to wrap a 3-inch ratchet strap around the tire and start squeezing. As I tightened the strap, the tire would collapse under the ratchet. This didn't allow the bead to seat around the rim. The solution? As the strap is tightened, I worked around the tire with my 4lb dead blow hammer to cause the tread to collapse evenly. It took a few minutes, but I could eventually get the bead to touch the rim around the entire circumference. Now the tricky part: Air up the tire enough to keep the bead from popping off again while at the same time releasing the ratchet strap before the pressure of the tire airing up broke it (and probably me as well!)
Once I got the truck on the road again, it's first stop was a heavy duty tire shop for balancing and front end alignment. Since the Swampers are so big, and a bias ply design, even computer balancing doesn't make them a good everyday tire. The best tire took 10 ounces to balance, the worst, 17. At least one is severely out-of-round, two others are slightly square. Combined with overnight flat-spotting, they're a joy to live with. If I drove this thing every day, I'd have another set of daily tires for it.
Here's the difference between 36-12.50's and 31-10.50's