Decided it was time to put new rubber on the D21 pickup. The original tires were at least 15 years old and the sidewalls had started to crack - long past due. I grabbed a set of General Altimax RT45s and figured it would be a fairly quick swap. The fronts came off no problem, but the rear aluminum wheels had other ideas.
The rears had bonded themselves to the brake drums - a classic case of galvanic corrosion from aluminum wheels mating to cast iron over the years. The night before I soaked the drum-to-wheel seam with PB Blaster and let that work overnight. The next day I reinstalled the lug nuts finger-tight, lowered the truck until the tires just touched the ground, and rocked it side to side. Both rears broke free without too much fuss.
One of the rears had a bonus surprise - a previous installer had applied bead sealer to the rim, for reasons I couldn't figure out. The bead surface was in great shape; there was no good reason for it to be there. That stuff is not fun to remove. I ended up chucking a 3M Roloc White bristle disc in the angle die-grinder and working it off that way. It got the job done with minimal impact to the rim surface.
New Altimax RT45s are on all four corners now. I have nickel-based anti-seize on order for the hub faces - the plan is to apply it at the first rotation so this doesn't happen again. Copper-based would be the wrong call here given the aluminum-to-iron contact; nickel sits in a much better spot on the galvanic scale for this application.
No vibration or pulling after driving around - truck is happy with its new shoes.
