Bead lock wheels

[BigRedXJ]

Like mentioned above unless you are doing some serious wheeling and airing down to pressures lower than 10-12psi I would NOT recommend bead locks. They just become a pain, for serious trail rigs they are worth it and work awesome, I have a set on my wheeling rig.

Right now I'm on 35's locked front and rear. I like more difficult wheeling, and will be stepping up to 37's after my current set of tires wears out. Anyone have experience with the Interco Birddog? I know they're not the prettiest to some, but I've heard a lot of good things about how they perform.

 

[Kevingraham]

Long time lurker, but hopefully I can add something constructive here. I have 15 inch rock monsters. Had allied previously. The hutchinson are a bit heavy at 43# but I went from a heavy 35 r17 toyo to a Goodyear mtr/k in a 35 12.50 15 and could not be happier. The wheels are flat out well made and hardly took any weight when we spun them on a balancer. I'm not sure if I can post pics, but I have some from mounting them in our basement. Just don't tell my wife that I did it inside our house.
As far as hutchinson vs walker Evans.... It's like asking if blondes are better than brunettes.....

 

[Kevingraham]

 

[BigRedXJ]

Thanks Kevin. Any chance you could snap a close up of the outer bead?

 

[Kevingraham]

They are on my jeep across the street. Do you mean the internals or the wheel itself mounted?

I'm running out there anyways so I'll snap a couple with my phone for you

 

[BigRedXJ]

The wheel mounted. I'd imagine it'd be tricky to get the internals.

 

[Kevingraham]

I put the black "caps" on the spare to see how it'd look. Not a fan of them. Here's a pic of my spare that I've been too lazy to pull them off of



And one more pic because I'm vain. Ha ha

 

[Kevingraham]

Here's another shot of the internals. The big black cylinder gets pinched between the inner and outer halves. It's actually the heaviest part of the wheel. I'll see if I have another on here....

 

[Kevingraham]

View attachment 236532

And another vanity shot. Ha ha

 

[BigRedXJ]

Cool, thank you very much!

 

[BigRedXJ]

Anybody use Stazworks double bead locks? Similar design to the Hutchinson's. Plenty of info on them from Pirate 4x4, but not many of those vehicles see street use.

 

[Bobs boot camping]

Stauns inner bead locks should fix your problem.

 

[Bobs boot camping]

huchisons are awsome and true double bead locks, they are the ones that made the original humvee h1 wheels for the military.

 

[Xbcasey]

A good option for anyone who regularly drives on the street, are the Interco Bird Dogs. They basically eliminate all of the negatives to beadlocks, while losing very little of the bead retention ability. I've had them on my TJ for about 6 months now and couldn't be happier with them. For normal off road trips I air down to about 10 psi, for harder more technical wheeling I have aired them down to 6 psi and have never had a problem.

 

[irish1371]

plus the hutchinsons are dot legal