Hey guys, Chris again from classic www.bugs.com and in this video I want to talk to you about portal walls. Yes, I did a video on portal wall installation a couple of years ago and I show you how to install these correctly. Many people do not install them correctly, you do not need glue, you do not need soap. These things just slip into in between the bead and the tire. You do have to break the bead off the tire in order to slip these in. You got a ridge right here that slips in between. You blow up the tire with some air and let the air out and then you can hammer the portal wall in evenly. There is a line here to show you where and how far to go into the rim. So it is nice and even. Like I said, you can either do it with a hammer or you can actually put it in by hand. We have done it by hand before and that is probably the best way. So it goes evenly on the tire. With this video I want to talk to you about the pros and cons to portal walls and who should be using them and who should not be using them. I have just been getting a lot of emails and phone calls lately on them. I do not know why. So I figured I would bring up the topic again and talk to you about it. Basically, portal walls are for the budget conscious. You can buy a set of these for about 75 bucks from portal walls.com after shipping even. If you are on a backyard project with your dad, it is the first time project you want to break the bank. Portal walls are pretty much the way to go. They look just like real white walls when installed correctly. People cannot tell the difference when they are installed correctly. Sometimes if they are not installed right, you will see a bubble on them and you will see they are kind of flopping away from the tire. But when you install them correctly, they actually look pretty good. We used to do this in the beginning when I started this business. We were budget conscious and we would go with portal walls. Now when we are going high end restoration, we do not opt for portal walls. I don't want to get a concourse car going and you slot portal walls on. But if you are just starting out, these are perfect. Just keep in mind, there are two companies that I have noticed that make the portal walls. I have got a company called Omega. I see Omega here and Atlas is very popular. The Atlas brand as of right now is still the superior brand I feel. They are the ones that sell the Atlas. I definitely recommend going with that. I recently picked up an Omega brand. This feels like plastic. Never used to. I used to get Omega and they actually used to come out of the bag smelling like fish oils. So they were actually very oily and very loose and pliable and they had very durable feeling. Now this feels like absolute plastic junk. I would never, ever use this. Again after market market that we have in this world today and every year the quality seems to be going down on things. So. But who should be using portal walls and what kind of tires should you be using portal walls on? For a beetle, beetle world. I'm talking about the other car world here. 165 or 15 radial tires, what I've used them on. Lucas tires will even tell you, I mean don't put them on radios. You can put them on, put them on biased tires. I have not had a problem with the radial tires. Anything I would say 165 and larger, you're okay with when going on a beetle rim. Anything smaller than that, I don't recommend. You need a substantial side wall for the portal wall to really work. If you start having a shorter tire, a thinner rubber, it's not enough of a side wall for the portal wall to really grab onto. And you get the most likely ruin those portal walls or the one of flying out. So I have guys calling me saying they got the big tires in the back on a beetle but then they got like say 145s in the front. I don't recommend doing that putting one portal walls on 145 tire. Definitely don't do that. But if you have a 165 and larger tire, you should be okay with that. So and again, it stalled correctly. And biased tires is what they recommend. So but again, I have no problem with the radial tires. Also, portal walls are really for, if you have a big racing motor in your car, you don't want to use them. They're going to come out. Portal walls are designed for, I would say up to 65 miles an hour, maybe 70. You got to keep it under 70. I would think for portal walls to survive. If you go over 70, you're hitting 80 and stuff. Those portal walls are going to probably start tearing up. I've seen them fray on the outside when you're going too fast. And they start to burn up and stuff. So it's for basically puddle jumping around town. A weekend driver sort of thing going to cruises, cruise nights, that sort of thing. You want to get up on the highway that's fine but it's cruising speed. 55, 65 miles an hour. That's basically when it comes to portal walls. I don't recommend going any faster than that. So you want to have a nice large size tire and you want to definitely keep the speed down. So again, if 36 horsepower motors, what we usually use, 40 horsepower motors, a stock beetle motor is absolutely fine. But if you start getting into the higher dual-carb motors and they're pushing 90, 100 horsepower or something like that, I would say, no, definitely don't use those. So as a daily driver, no, don't use them for daily driving. Again, he's a more for puddle jumping around town, cruise nights, fair weather cars. That sort of thing. You do have to keep up on them. Another time, they might start to dirty and yellow. If you use tire wet on these things, they're going to start to yellow up pretty quickly. You got to keep these dry. So when I put some tire wet on my tire, I then go back, would say some bleach white or something or you could even put some paint thinner on a rag or a lacquer thinner, very little bit, and to take the moisture or take whatever grease that's on the portal wall off of it. It needs to be kind of dry. Once you put any sort of oil residue on it, it's going to deteriorate pretty quickly. So that's the one thing about it. We got to keep up on them and keep them clean. So I've had no problem with bleach white. You can buy that from AutoZone and use those on the portal walls. It's okay. And that's basically it. I mean, it's not rocket science. Again, there's no difficulty installing these. Again, I have the video on it. If there's anybody else that tells you any otherwise on how to install it, it's really not much to it. So take a look at my video and you'll see. But again, more for a driver quality car, public jumping around town. You want to go to a show or a cruise night and keep in the speeds low. So all right. I hope that debunks some of the myths out there about portal walls. They're still pretty good to use. They make the cars look good. I mean, you see that convertible in the back that actually has portal walls on. And many people just can't even tell. Until you get your finger behind the portal wall and flop it away from the tie. That's how you can really tell. So it really, it fakes the eye sometimes. So all right, guys, that's that tip for today. If you have any questions, please email me. Chris said classic www.bugs.com or visit my website, www.classicvwbugs.com. Take care.