I'm this is a variation of the WD40 video
http://wheels.videosift.com/video/Redneck-Tire-Inflation-WD-40-Style

Wow, are they ever incompetent.
I've seen this done many time - successfully.
They could have tried different fuels. Understanding this could go wrong if done wrong, I just don't think they even tried to do it successfully.

It's like it was a PSA for what could go wrong. Don't try this at home kiddies - "Danger Will Robinson - Danger!"

my thoughts exactly

have seen this done before too, top gear showed it done

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeCrqNIpiMM

that girl put the fluid on differently than it should be

silly presenters

That was the example I was thinking about too. So we know it works, maybe the difference is that they used it to reseat the tire then pumped it up with air.

>> ^woozy-uk:

my thoughts exactly
have seen this done before too, top gear showed it done
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeCrqNIpiMM
that girl put the fluid on differently than it should be
silly presenters

So the limiting reactant would be the starter fluid and the air in the tire. Oxygen to be more exact. Because you want enough forces to seat the tire, but not so much it removes all of the gases from the tire, maybe they should have tried less starter fluid. If that's depleted in the reaction quickly leaving enough energy to seat the tire, but also enough oxygen left over from the reaction, you might end up with a working tire.

Somebody please double check my thought process, but I think it's definitely worth more experimentation.

Top Gear didn't show it done....they showed the tire re-seat on the rim and that is all. The same thing Mythbusters showed was possible. Of all the videos I have seen (so far) of this stunt I have yet to see one that shows the tire to re-seat and then support the weight of the vehicle as if it was fully inflated.

>> ^woozy-uk:

my thoughts exactly
have seen this done before too, top gear showed it done
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeCrqNIpiMM
that girl put the fluid on differently than it should be
silly presenters

This episode always bugged me. They got the concept wrong. The idea has always been to re-seat a tire's bead seal THEN pump it up. You can fill it afterwards with a bicycle hand pump if neccessary. 4 wheelers break the bead seal all the time when they deflate to get better traction and they don't use wheels with bead locks.

Maybe if the myth was you can drive away after the explosion, that'd be acceptable.

>> ^rottenseed:

So the limiting reactant would be the starter fluid and the air in the tire. Oxygen to be more exact. Because you want enough forces to seat the tire, but not so much it removes all of the gases from the tire, maybe they should have tried less starter fluid. If that's depleted in the reaction quickly leaving enough energy to seat the tire, but also enough oxygen left over from the reaction, you might end up with a working tire.
Somebody please double check my thought process, but I think it's definitely worth more experimentation.

Would be one to test, but I think you'd end up with the same problem. End of the day to jump the tyre back on the rim you are going to be filling quite a lot of the inside of that tyre with the hot gases from the combustion. You might get less deflation with less accelarant, but I'd think you'd start with a lower pressure within the tyre even before the gases cool, so you wouldn't gain much. Thats my guess anyway.


Now maybe if you did this, and at the same time dropped just the right amount of dry ice in with it you could get the tyre back on the rim AND get it pressurised without the need for some sort of pump. Ofc, dry ice is not exactly something you tend to have stored in the glove compartment...

That might work better, but to pressurize a tire, you need significantly more gas than just the little bit that comes out of the spray can, and it must be at ambient temperature too to count. Clearly, the only reason this inflates the tire at all is the heat. Here's a thought experiment that disproves the "stays inflated" myth:

Consider that you need to have much more gas inside the tire than outside for it to stay inflated at ambient temperature. Before lighting the gas, there's the same pressure inside and outside the tire because the two areas are contiguous. When she lights the fire, the gas inside expands rapidly, and lots of it escapes, so now, while there's a greater volume of gas inside the tire than before, this is due to a greatly reduced density, so there's actually less gas inside than before, which is why there was a vacuum. Using heat, there will always be less gas inside than before. It's not even worth experimenting. The only way something like this could work is with compressed gas, which you certainly wouldn't want to do because that would blow the tire up if it were lit on fire.

I think there are self-inflating tires already on the market that have compressed gas cartridges built in, triggered by a sensor that fixes flats by spraying a sealant inside, then lots of pressurized gas, probably CO2. They don't use fire.>> ^rottenseed:

So the limiting reactant would be the starter fluid and the air in the tire. Oxygen to be more exact. Because you want enough forces to seat the tire, but not so much it removes all of the gases from the tire, maybe they should have tried less starter fluid. If that's depleted in the reaction quickly leaving enough energy to seat the tire, but also enough oxygen left over from the reaction, you might end up with a working tire.
Somebody please double check my thought process, but I think it's definitely worth more experimentation.

That's very true. The simple fact that because the pressure of the tire off the rim is going to be normalized with the atmospheric pressure, even if you seated the tire back on manually, you'd have a zero pressure delta between outside the tire and inside. For a tire to run properly, usually you have to have a difference of approximately 30 psi. So yea, case closed. THANKS!>> ^messenger:

That might work better, but to pressurize a tire, you need significantly more gas than just the little bit that comes out of the spray can, and it must be at ambient temperature too to count. Clearly, the only reason this inflates the tire at all is the heat. Here's a thought experiment that disproves the "stays inflated" myth:
Consider that you need to have much more gas inside the tire than outside for it to stay inflated at ambient temperature. Before lighting the gas, there's the same pressure inside and outside the tire because the two areas are contiguous. When she lights the fire, the gas inside expands rapidly, and lots of it escapes, so now, while there's a greater volume of gas inside the tire than before, this is due to a greatly reduced density, so there's actually less gas inside than before, which is why there was a vacuum. Using heat, there will always be less gas inside than before. It's not even worth experimenting. The only way something like this could work is with compressed gas, which you certainly wouldn't want to do because that would blow the tire up if it were lit on fire.
I think there are self-inflating tires already on the market that have compressed gas cartridges built in, triggered by a sensor that fixes flats by spraying a sealant inside, then lots of pressurized gas, probably CO2. They don't use fire.>> ^rottenseed:
So the limiting reactant would be the starter fluid and the air in the tire. Oxygen to be more exact. Because you want enough forces to seat the tire, but not so much it removes all of the gases from the tire, maybe they should have tried less starter fluid. If that's depleted in the reaction quickly leaving enough energy to seat the tire, but also enough oxygen left over from the reaction, you might end up with a working tire.
Somebody please double check my thought process, but I think it's definitely worth more experimentation.

Not busted. Someone needs to write these asshats. I almost always hate when they cut to these 3 teamed up to do lesser myth busting...

People keep saying this...and people keep not supplying any evidence to back it up. Where is the video that shows this method keeping the tire inflated enough to support the weight of the vehicle?>> ^poolcleaner:

Not busted. Someone needs to write these asshats. I almost always hate when they cut to these 3 teamed up to do lesser myth busting...

So, if one was to get a set of older tires from a friend and wanted to replace your (even older) tires on your own car with them, this could be used to reseat the tires? I know it's fairly inexpensive to get it done professionally at a garage but I am poor as beans and have lighter fluid and a flame. Once I got them seated, I could just reinflate them after they were re-seated and they would be fine? I'm very interested in trying this just for fun and to save a few bucks. Anyone have any precautions I may be ignoring?

*dead

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