De-studding Wintercat SSTs

[Spook50]

I'm in the process of pulling the studs out of a set of barely worn Wintercat SSTs that are mounted to the Tacoma wheels I got from a buddy at work ($150 for the whole set since he didn't want to take them to Hawaii with him when he moved. Can't beat that), and I noticed that on a handful of the stud holes I can see the steel belt at the bottom. No damage that I can see; it just looks like the thin coating of rubber that should normally be there missed a spot or something.

Have any of you who've removed studs noticed this at all with any of your tires? I'm just pondering if I should keep a close eye on that tire for future leaks and have a patch kit ready at hand (usually I put the spare on and have a tire shop dismount the leaking one and put on an internal patch), since I don't have a 5th wheel yet to mount a spare on.

 

[DrivingMissRosey]

I wouldn't sweat it more than just running over the random nail which would puncture your tire anyway.

 

[Spook50]

Sounds good to me. I've gotten two done so far and inflated to 60PSI, so hopefully if there IS any leak at all it'll show itself before I put the wheels on my truck.

 

[80t0ylc]

Uh, you might want to re-think this. Don't know where you live or run due to your clever location, but I've pulled studs out of several sets of tires and not seen this, except on fairly worn and old tires. To be safe I'd get a knowledgeable opinion from a reputable tire shop. If you live in snow country, that should not be hard to find. It's possible that the studs were installed incorrectly and may have sacrificed the integrity of those tires. (From the apparent age of those tires, you shouldn't see steel belt in those holes.) This might be good to know if you're thinking about relying on them. Just passing on an opinion - good luck

 

[Spook50]

Uh, you might want to re-think this. Don't know where you live or run due to your clever location, but I've pulled studs out of several sets of tires and not seen this, except on fairly worn and old tires. To be safe I'd get a knowledgeable opinion from a reputable tire shop. If you live in snow country, that should not be hard to find. It's possible that the studs were installed incorrectly and may have sacrificed the integrity of those tires. (From the apparent age of those tires, you shouldn't see steel belt in those holes.) This might be good to know if you're thinking about relying on them. Just passing on an opinion - good luck

my wife got me hooked on Firefly and we ended up watching the series and then Serenity in the space of about three days.

I'm in the inland PNW (Spokane area), so there's a pretty good mix of all the seasons. I do know the studs were originally installed at a Les Schwab when the tires were bought (from the same store), and from my experience when I worked there about 12 years ago they made sure all their employees knew what they were doing when installing studs. Plus as long as the right gun is being used to install them it's very hard to mess them up, give the overall shape of the studs.

Only thing is, during the time I worked there, I never saw any de-studded tires or fielded any questions about it from any customers, so the idea of removing the studs never came up while I was there.