Hey gents
New to this forum.

Anyway I've got a 1998 Kawasaki Lakota. Picked it up cheap and have been working on it the past couple of years. What a hunk of junk it was but now it's runs well other than it smokes quite a bit and it looks decent now too.

Tonight on the rears I mounted up some new STI Black Diamond tires. 22x11x10's. No suprises doing that job using my free manual tire machine. However a couple weeks back for the front I mounted up some ITP holeshots in 22x7x10. They are brand new tires but have been sitting for a few years. My best friend had them sitting in a barn. My problem is I can't get the inner bead to pop on either rim. The rims are stock and are 5.5x10 if I remember correctly. The tires I pulled off were the same size but a bad look would puncture the tires. I even had to use a ratchet strap to even get the tires to take air. On top of that tonight I tried using a heat gun thinking maybe they just needed a little extra flexibility. I've never had a problem mounting tires up before.

Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

We got tired (no pun intended) of using ratchet straps and tire irons on atv tires. Our Coates tire machine would do the hard part most of the time taking them of and on,but on stiff new sidewalls that were hard to seat became a pain in the butt getting them seated even with plenty of air pressure.We ended up getting a medium sized bead blaster and was impressed on how simple it is,how good it works. Just take it to any good tire shop that has one. A lot of them wont charge you anything or just a couple bucks.

 

Hey good call. My buddy has one of those that he made. I forgot about doing that.