[Flathead Fever]

I mounted thousands of tires at work over the years but those were nice pliable used tires. At home with vintage cars, sometimes you have to deal with those rock-hard tires. The ones that hold a car up with no air in them. I just removed three petrified tires last wee for a neighbor. If you do not cut them off you "will" end up bending the rims. I have an old Coats 40/40 tire changer and it won't break those rock-hard tires loose, I can see the center hub of the rim flexing while the machine is trying to break the beads, that's no good. Over the years the fastest method I have found is to take a chainsaw around the sidewalls a couple inches from the bead. Then I take a nail bar for pulling large nails and a hand sledge and drive the 90-degree bent end of the bar between the bead and rim that usually pops them loose in a couple of hits. Then I take an air grinder with a thin cutoff wheel cut through the beads. There should not be any steel in the sidewalls so you can use a chainsaw there, but the beads will probably have steel inside of them, so you want to grind through those. It takes about 5-monutes per tire to get them off that way.

I usually find the rims with those rock-hard tires have gotten water inside of them from sitting outside for decades. The rims are almost always badly pitted inside. I would stay away from buying any rims with petrified tires on them.