The Cheetah
What’s a bead seating tool and when would we use it?
Let’s talk tires.
Tires come in all sizes and styles. Some are large, some are small. Some are for mudding, some are for the road. Some are meant for summer, some are meant for winter. Some have tread…well…okay if yours don’t have any tread you need to bring your car in!
When tires sit at a factory, they are stacked. The longer these stacked tires sit, the more they compress and compact. This, fortunately, does not affect their performance, merely makes it a pain in the butt to install them without the proper tool. If the tire is too “thin” for the wheel, it makes it difficult to slowly inflate. In fact, you have to use an immense amount of compacted air in order to “catch the bead.”
“Catching the bead,” refers to the tire bead. Look at a tire. On the inside rim, you will notice the rubber is a little thicker than the rest of the sidewall. This thick portion is the bead. Now, take a look at a wheel. You will notice a lip around the rim of the wheel. The bead of the tire and that lip of your wheel work together to ensure your tire doesn’t go flat.
Now. What kind of tool would take 150 PSI and blast it into a tire in less than a second? The Cheetah (*growl*). The Cheetah (*growl*) fills the tire with air so quickly that the bead catches on the rim of the wheel before anyone has a chance to blink. Unless you had a lot of lighter fluid, a match and a skewed sense of risk management, this process would be difficult without The Cheetah (*growl*).
