Sure Brenno.
I have an unmounted steel and alloy beadlock, you can see how they work and the difference in fitup.
I'll start with the alloy beadlock. This is a Walker Evans, they are all pretty much the same.
The bead sits in this step.
Then the ring is laid on the top and bolted down.
Whilst these alloy beadlocks give the impression there is no gap between the ring and the wheel when they're torqued up, you can see that the ring deflects significantly and while there is no visible gap on the outside, there certainly is on the inside.
OMF, a US supplier of rims and conversions, used to supply anti coning washers, which are just big wide thick washers, so try and keep the ring sitting flat and prevent bending load on the bolts.
If you look carefully at the first photo, you can see the bolts have heavily eaten into the ring, which is supplied flat when new.
On a converted steel wheel, the fitup looks like this
Instead of the rim locating and centring the tyre, the beadlock ring does that job and the rim is flat.
This is not the best photo, but you can see the difference here, and why there is a gap when the steel ring is bolted down. In the case of the steel beadlock, the inner and outer ring both deform, on the alloy rim, only the outer rim can deform.
In this photo you can see that both the steel and alloy rim start out as a whole, standard rim. A tyre could be mounted normally if you wished, eliminating the beadlock function.
The big issue with steel beadlocks are leaks. They leak for two reasons.
A) there are pores/stop starts/crater cracks in the weld between the inner ring and the bead lip. This is a hassle to fix as once everything is assembled and painted it all has to come apart to repair this weld, hence I penetrant tested my latest set. three of the four needed some touch up.
B) the bead bundle is damaged from previous fitment (in the case of second hand tyres) and air leaks past the bead. obviously, in both cases, the rim is sealing to the tyre on the back side of the bead, Tyres aren't designed to seal on this face so it can be a struggle, especially if the bead is torn up from mounting and dismounting.
I believe my latest set are completely leak free. I put that down to new, soft tyres and penetrant testing the weld.
Basically, to bolt them up, alloys have a thread cut into the rim, so you mount the tyre by pushing the front of the rim ( the beadlock side) into the back of the tyre, much like mounting a tyre normally.then you flip the tyre over, knock the tyre onto the lip, and install all the bolts, gradually working up to torque in a star pattern.
Likewise with the steel rim, but these use a nut on the back so there is a bit more labour. some attention has to be paid that the outer ring is sitting central on tyre, and not riding high. i used some detergent to get the ring to slip into the bead area of the roxxzillas - I had one not pull down square when trying without detergent. Again, I install 4 bolts and pull them down to ensure the ring is sitting flat and level, then install all the bolts and torque. I have used a star pattern before but this time I went around tightening every second bolt, then back the other way for every second bolt until they were all even.
Some other info - yes, if you whack stuff really, really hard with them it it possible to break bolts. This happened with my G wagen.
No, they are not road legal. This used to be a hassle but now almost every alloy rim is styled to look like a beadlock and supercrap sell beadlock style trim rings, telling the difference is very difficult and I don't think it's really a policing focus. They rims aren't dangerous on the road, they're just not approved.
There ARE DOT approved beadlocks. They are made by Hutchinson who supply military manufactures. They do sell to the public and their rims were available from Mopar for JK jeeps for about 5 minutes many years ago. They are a 2 piece rim with a liner so both beads are clamped. (You may be familiar with this from Hummer beadlocks - the the basis of their run flat system, which is made by Hutchinson) Their customer service department for civilians is non existent and its almost impossible to get rims out of them.
I hope this helps.
