[jagarra]

Finally received my snows for the back of my truck after waiting for a few months for delivery. As I mentioned previously, I have the original 3 piece rims on my truck, now the joy of changing the tires on them began. First of all they had a 3 digit date code with the last digit being a 5. Googling the Lee brand showed they were discontinued by Good Year in around 1980. So they may be from 1975 date and been on there for 47 years. No wonder they felt square.
The tires were basically rusted to the rims, after the retaining ring was removed nothing moved. I inflated the tire a bit with the retainer removed so the outside rim portion raised a bit above the edge and smacked it a number of times with a dead blow hammer to break it from the tire. that was easy compared to the reverse side. The tire was mounted on my 60s era manual Coates tire changer, A unit I used when I worked in service stations when in high school, a lot of effort and many rotations lifting from the underside finally broke the bottom free and the tire/tube assembly was removed. Much time was spent removing rust the the outside rim and rim of the wheel, they may have spent time laying on the ground flat so the water seeped into the interior of the wheel and rusted everything, after some time wire brushing every surface and using a grinder with a scotch brite pad attachment the rim was clean on the inside. We are now ready for the tire installation. looks like i am out of room, cont........