Fixing little bitty tires...

[flagmanruss]

I have been driven half insane by a little green (nursery) wagon. Very handy around the yard. (Most recently to haul my cannons & powder magazine to the backyard on the 4th... til the wheel fell off again.) Let me start at the beginning:

Wagon is a few years old...

2 front tires went flat. I patched the tubes... let them sit for a few days, seemed fixed. I found it takes 4 hands to hold the 2 piece rims, tube & tires, get the bolts, lock washers & nuts installed. (Note, I only have one hand that works decent, my frustration level gets pretty high.) The tires stayed up 2 days counting the day I put it together. FAIL!

I took them apart, Sheila cleaned the tube & patched it (gonna show me how)... they didn't stay up 24 hours. FAIL!!

I bought new patches, patched the tube again, seemed like that's what it took... 3 days later... flat again. FAIL!!

I was at Harbor Freight, bought 4 solid tires, wheels, bearings. They fit on, needed big washers to shim. Much heavier than tire/wheel combo. Took way too much effort to pull. FAIL!

On another trip to Harbor Freight, they had china wheels with tubes & tires. I bought them, they slid right on. Could not get the lock washers under the cap nut but otherwise, seemed a fix. FAIL!!

(All the things tried to get rubber under a little wagon)

Over the 4th, towed the wagon behind my scooter... I made several trips, setting up & again packing up... til... the wheel came off. FAIL!! 11mm cap nut is AWOL in the yard somewhere. We walked the track a couple of times, didn't recover it, of course. I even used my big 16" magnet (screw picker-upper) with no success.

I asked the Home & Auto store where it had come from & they did get tubes in for me... 5.99ea seemed pretty reasonable at this point but I was not looking forward to struggling with the assembly. But I'd been thinking all this time... I needed a clamp, a fixture to hold it all together. So here it is.

I used a big dowel to make a guide that slides into the bearing on the back piece... with a flange that catches the outside wheel half while still allowing access to the bolts holes. I used a 1/4' threaded rod, wing nut, flat washer & plain nut.

Sorry about the focus... so this is the guide. Held in a vise on the corner of the bench.

Here the guide is holding the wheels halves together & I've gotten 2 bolts started.

I really like that I can go around the tire & squeeze it enough to see the rim halves meet to be sure the tube isn't pinched... before tightening the nuts. I think I may have started to pinch the second tube but by the time I'd inspected all the way around, it was free again. Snug the bolts down & over to the compressor to air them up.

I couldn't get meteric cap nuts locally. I picked up a couple of 11mm nuts at Home Depot, supposed to be self locking but not Ny-lock. Hope they go on far enough to lock or allow a lock washer.

To Be Continued...

[Rogan]

Russ, I use carts with the same 10" tires to haul 650 pound moon bounces on, for my business. I constantly have to fix flats. I can do the wheel-halves by hand, but I do have (mostly) total control over both hands (nerve damage in left arm from broken neck in '03.) The no-flat replacements are too expensive ($25-30) and the tubed ones are getting harder to come by, so it seems. I've stepped one of my carts up to the 13" tire assembly (http://www.harborfreight.com/13-inch-x-5-inch-heavy-duty-pneumatic-tire-37767.html) and this actually seems to help. As for the axle nut issue, I had one cart that lost an axle nut, so I drilled a 1/8" hole (after measuring the appropriate location) slid the wheel assembly on, followed by a flat washer, then a cotter pin.