#teamstealth gallery

Well, I have never had a set of beadlocks before so I cannot make direct comparisons but I can share my experiences with them. I've wanted to try them out for a long time, even when I had a jeep years ago. So when I put on what should be the last suspension iteration for this truck I decided to say fuck it and jump in. When I ordered them I had to contact SCS personally, we went back and forth with a bunch of questions I had and told him what I wanted, he made a mock up photo of what it looked like and told him to send me the invoice, several weeks later OMF called me to pick them up.

I picked them up a couple months ago. I live local to OMF so I avoided shipping costs but paid CA sales tax. I think the conversion cost is around $200 per wheel, so add that to the cost of whatever wheel you're looking at. Single digit PSIs on trails is damn nice but they do come with added work. You have to let all the air out of the tires and retorque the beadlock bolts every so often. OMF recommends 250mi, from what I've gathered looking around on the web that interval lengthens out as the tire seats its self from spinning. The last couple of times I did a torque check the bolts weren't loose at all, I'm going to start spacing the interval out more.

Most chain tire shops will not work on beadlocks. I did eventually find a shop that would not only balance them, but assemble them as well. I wasn't comfortable with a bunch of grease monkeys beating up on the wheels with impact wrenchs so I did the tire swap myself, pulling the tires off the old wheels and installing them on the new ones. Entire process probably took around 7hr to do 5 tires. The first one took around 2 hours, and once I got the technique to separate the old tires/wheels it went a lot easier. The last tire/wheel probably only took around 45min to do the swap and torquing.

For tire balancing I had some issues, which I believe are solely due to the Cooper MTPs, the damn things only have around 6k and I lose several shoulder lugs every trail I go on. I haven't seen a whole lot of people on Tacomaworld that have these tires but the couple I have seen and beat on their trucks aren't happy with the MTPs. I first tried Dynabeads and they didn't do shit. They're also loud as hell. When coming to a stop the little ceramic BBs rain down on the inside of the wheel and sounds like shit(sounds like someone shook a tin can full of hex nuts). Same thing happens when accelerating from a stop until the Dynabeads have enough energy to spin with the tire they rain down in the inside of the wheel, its not as noticeable, but it can still be heard with the radio off and over the noise from the engine accelerating. I'm of the mind that my truck makes enough noise as it is I don't need to add more to it for something that apparently isn't doing shit for me. Pulling all of the Dynabeads out of all 5 tires took around 2.5hr. I next tried a normal wheel balance at a Mom&Pop shop. It made the balance better but still had a cabin wobble at high way speeds. After that I found a Mom&Pop shop that had a Hunter Road Force Balance Machine and had them balance them. They said 2 tire/wheels were good. 2 needed to be rotated relative to each other and the last 1 tire was beyond fucked and should be the designated spare. I don't know how they come to those conclusions but the highway speed cabin wobble I had went away. If you check Hunter's website they have a map of where their machines are, you can also google around for you particular location, the shop I went to wasn't on Hunter's website. http://www.hunter.com/gsp9700. If you do enough searching around the internet you'll find a lot of people saying one tire balance method is snake oil and another is gold. Based on my experience I would never use Dynabeads again and wouldn't waste money on a normal tire balance. I would go straight to the Road Force Balance and save the money and time. But again, some people even say Road Force Balancing is snake oil. YMMV.

Tacomaworld isn't a good resource for researching beadlocks since so few people are running them on here. If you want to do more looking around you will find more information on Jeep websites, they are more commonly used on Jeeps.

Some of these are small, some large, and some may not apply to you. I'm definitely missing some pros/cons but these are what I can think off the top of my head. YMMV

Pros
----Boosts traction (Duh)
----Single Digit PSI with no chance of losing the outer bead
----Tire stays clamped to the wheel even when flat
----In an emergency situation the tire will stay clamped to the tire and cannot move, so if you lose 2 tires you can get back to pavement with rubber wrapped around the wheels
----Single digits smooth out rough trails even better than routine airing down
----If you're into fashion(or rock crawl and care about how your wheels look), you can swap out the rings for new ones once you get the old ones scuffed up.
----There are a lot of options for the ring in both style and color, I wanted something simple looking, but didn't want it to look like a fauxlock. Came out exactly how I wanted.
----Strengthens the outer bead area (I'm just assuming this by the design of it, I could be wrong on this)

Cons
----Price
----Extra work to maintain
----Steering a little harder at low PSIs
----I have never noticed the tires on the rear axle binding and releasing when when the rear is locked. But with the rear locked and driving up switch backs at 9psi I can definitely hear the rear tires binding and releasing. I used to generally leave the rear locker engaged when on trails that I might use it on, now I disengage it and only use it when I need it.
----Lower PSIs reduce clearances slightly
----Have to make a decision about what to with the TPMS. There's no point in running single digits with the TPMS, if you're rock crawling eventually you're going to crush one(which will result in a flat tire). I didn't want to deal with the wiring BS to bypass the warning light so I went with the "Pipe Bomb Method" and keep the pipe in the glove box.
----Not explicitly legal, but not banned either. Despite popular misconception they are not illegal. There's been a bounty for a donation to a charity of one's choosing if anyone can find a law that explicitly says beadlocks are illegal. No one has claimed the bounty.
----Potential liability in an accident. If you're thinking about beadlocks you've probably got a lot of other stuff on your truck that is technically "Offroad Use Only" and understand the risks. If beadlocks are properly assembled and maintained I really don't see any safety issues with them. The beadlocks I've got are held down with 24 5/16" grade 8 bolts(I don't know if any SCS wheels come in these options but some types of beadlocks use 32 bolts, and some beadlocks use 3/8" bolts). They aren't going anywhere and cannot imagine all 24 bolts shearing simultaneously and the ring flying off while cruising down the road. You would find sheared bolts before that would ever happen. Worst case scenario I could see would be ignoring retorque checks and the bolts loosen up and start to let air out along the outer bead. I suspect a lot of the offroad community apprehension/misinformation about beadlocks stems from years ago when it was common for some redneck retard to half-ass weld home made rings to his wheels and then they fell apart later. If you get a quality beadlock and maintain them properly I don't see any increased risks over any other "Offroad Use Only" modification
----Oddball thing I noticed, I've only washed my truck once since I put them on, but water pools up behind the beadlock since it can't drain out, I blew it out with compressed air so it wouldn't sit like that and accelerate corrosion on the bolts.

Would I do it all again? Hell yeah.

 

So how did they go about installing the beadlocks on the SCS wheels? Cut the lip off the wheel and welded on a new ring to the wheel? Do you have any pics before assembly?

 

Damnit, I knew I should have taken photos, but nope I did not. Next time I have them apart I'll have to snap some photos. But yeah, thats the basic procedure.
Here is an article on their process, just try to read through all the marketing fluff.
http://www.offroadxtreme.com/engine...-tech-the-art-of-beadlock-conversions-by-omf/

 

They do it to both sides of the wheel correct? There are rings on both sides to lock both beads of the tire on right? In that article the pictures seem like there is only one side that has the rings on it... i am very interested in this... DD mod is arriving next week and truck is coming off the road except for wheeling and some weekends.

 

What I have is a single beadlock, just the outer bead is locked. When offroading most (not all) of the lateral forces on the tire are acting on the outer bead to unseat it.

What you are describing is a double beadlock, of which the only one I've seen is the "Hummer style" inner beadlocks.

A single beadlock provides most of the same benefits as a double beadlock, with the obvious downside that the inner bead isn't locked as well.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. I haven't looked into double beadlock style too much. Hutchinsons are the only ones I have any familiarity with. They weigh a little over 54lb each. I didn't put my wheels on a scale to see how much they weighed, but I would guess its not even half of that. That's a fuck load of mass to rotate. Bullaculla is installing them on his SAS. https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...ock-wheels-and-37-tires.490999/#post-15158772

 

3" Toytec lift
285 75 16s
Front bumper trim/BFH on pinch weld
Slight rub while flexing

 

Gotcha! I was just curious... the bead is still prone to coming off but atleast you wouldn't lose it on both sides just the one side. Kinda makes sense but at the same time to me unless its a double beadlock it seams kinda pointless... why only do half. I assume OMF doesn't offer a custom job to do both front and back huh?

I would not run the hutchinsons as I have a 4 banger and would need gears JUST for the wheels... thats ridiculous.

 

Anybody running wheel spacers in the front with the SCS SR8 17x8.5? Pics?

 

Digging the SCS wheels down south....and we tried to recreate @247daryl's photos....need more vehicles next time.

 

wow! Need!
Still no pics of anyone with them on..?
I need a visual before I commit.

 

You'll have plenty of time to think of a comment....

 

Got my truck washed and got the road grime off of my F5s!

 

F5's mounted up with 285/75/17 Ridge Grapplers. Vin was awesome to work with. Stand up guy for sure. Will definitely be doing business with SCS in the future. These wheels look amazing!


Ignore the dirtiness..

 

Little update...
Toytec Boss 2.0 set at 2" alll around
265/70 17
Jet black RAY 10s
No more rubbing
Thanks for sending me more decals vin much appreciated

 

Mornin ChadsPride!

Question, is it just the lighting in these pics or are they this light?
I know SCS has had a couple color option, and I know I ordered matte dark bronze in the 9" wide wheel.
Why are yours so much lighter than these? Did you order these a while back before the change to dark bronze?

 

It's just the lighting. You'll probably get 5 different shades if you asked 5 different guys to take photos of this finish. The finish looks different depending if it's indoors or outdoors and how much sunlight is hitting the wheel. It's very unique in my opinion.

 

Can confirm. I have these sitting in my room (one outside the box of course...) and just moving positions in the room changes the color how the light hits is.

 

Exactly what I want!
Thanks, just making sure.
Beautiful!

 

17x8.5 Matte Gunmetal F5

1. Stock
2. 265/70-R17 Toyo Open Country M/T
3. n/a
4. n/a

 

SEXY shots!!!