Colt Case Ingersoll Garden Tractors

So I need to upgrade the tires on my 4020 before I hang a 1000lb hoe off the back of it.

And having read everything about it that I can find, here's what I've learned, and here's my plan:
1. Nobody makes an 8x16 turf tire anymore.
2. You can get 8x16 R-1 Ag tires easily enough, but you don't want them if you still intend to do mowing duty
It tears up the yard
And has a terrible ride.
3. Your best substitute for turf tires is regular passenger radials
235/85r16 seems to be the agreed upon best size.
4. There are a wide variety of affordable rugged/mud tires available in that size.
But they're all, every last one of them, LT tires, aka "10 ply rated" , aka "load index 120", aka "Load range E"
Which shouldn't tear up the yard too bad, but is still going to be a terrible ride.
5. After extensive poking around, I find that one similar overall radial tire size that you can buy a non-LT version, a "passenger" tire aka "standard load", aka "4 ply rated" And that's all I really need. That's still over 2000lbs rating per tire.
6. That size is P245/75r16. Those will be one inch shorter (1/2" of ground clearance) and .3 inches wider.
I don't think I'll notice the difference.
My tire chains should still fit.
The "P" in front of 245 is important, that's what denotes "Passenger" instead of "LT/Light Truck"
7. But almost all of them are a standard road tread, designed for good rain performance, low road noise. I want an aggressive tread, driving around my lawn.
8. But I have found and purchased a tire that I think combines everything I need, acceptably, if not ideally:

I have ordered two of these:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mastertrack- ... 1258253939
I think the tread is aggressive enough. I think the overall tire size will be acceptable. I think the "standard load rating" ride will be... good enough. I think they'll be fine with the extra backhoe weight. And I think they were cheap enough.

I'll give a review once I've tried them out.

Bob

Looks good Bob, you're going to travel just a little slower, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, loaders and backhoes normally are a little slower anyway.

Well, they've arrived. And they certainly look absolutely identical to look at them. Now I just have to dismount the old tires without losing all the liquid ballast. And get the new ones mounted up and see what I think

Bob

Very nice! I really like the look!

thebuildist wrote: ↑Wed Apr 12, 2023 5:08 pm Well, they've arrived. And they certainly look absolutely identical to look at them. Now I just have to dismount the old tires without losing all the liquid ballast. And get the new ones mounted up and see what I think

Bob

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2VXhZt6z4b9yvWqc7

Look good Bob. With the wheel still on tractor and jacked up . Clean buckets and hose big enough to go over valve , put valve at top with bucket under valve and remove core . Slip hose over the valve and into bucket . lower jack ( large ratchet strap may help get squeeze more out . When fluid stops flowing , put valve back in, remove wheel and lay flat on floor . Now you can remove the valve stem , giving a hole large enough to put a small pump hose in . You should be able to get almost all of it out this way with little mess. Put New valve stems in with silicone grease .
You may keep the change .

Nice grip on it. Looks good.

Noel

I have one of the tires swapped out, and it is very similar to the stock turf tire:
The new tire is about 3/4" shorter overall than the stock one, but I think it really comes from the difference in the center "crowning" of the stock tire. The stock tire is very crowned, the new tire not as much. So in theory the back end would ride 3/8" lower than before, but I think that a lot of that crown actually just flexed inward. So it may ride almost exactly the same height as before.

Perhaps those crowned knobs dug harder down into the dirt and the new tire will slip easier than the old. It's hard to say.

Meanwhile, I had purchase a 16 gallon tub when I ordered the tires, to use it to capture and reclaim the liquid ballast.

It worked like a charm. Kinda.

I drained the tire into the tub, and used a wooden wedge to break the bead right there in place. With all the liquid lube, the bead broke easily. Then I lifted the tire out and used an electric siphon pump to finish draining its contents into the tub.

It worked very smoothly, I spilled a total of maybe a half a cup.

Then I mounted up the new tire, inflated it enough to seat the bead, re-broke the top bead, and laid it down to fill it like I did the first time.

I used the same siphon pump to fill all the ballast right back into the new tire, shot some air in there to seat the bead, and *POOF!* the first tire was done.
It was when I was working on the second tire that I found out the downside of breaking the bead to pour in ballast.

I repeated the whole process, but after getting the new tire on the rim I had a terrible time getting it to seat the bead using air pressure. The second tire really sits narrower at rest, so if one tire bead is touching the rim, the other is a full inch away. I eventually carefully dried the rim and the tire bead, and used force to push the dry rim deep into the dry bead. The I flipped it over and with the first bead friction-stuck in place, I was able (barely) to push the rim against the rubber bead enough to get the air pressure to inflate everything nicely into place. I ran it up to about 35 psi, and then carefully left the dry bead in place while I re-broke the top bead.

And then filled it with the pump as before.

After I had it all filled, I hooked up the air chuck, shot the air to it, and wiggled the tire/rim to get the bead to catch and inflate.

But that's not what happened. What did happen was that the rim unseated from the lower bead and proceeded to gush out all 15 or 16 gallons of RV antifreeze right there in the middle of my shop.

A two-inch high pink tidal wave spread out 15 feet in all directions. The biggest loss was the value of the antifreeze itself, and the fact that it got the bottom of my plywood pile wet. So some of my wood/plywood will be stained and/or warped at the bottom now.

That and the fact that I don't have ballast in my tire now.

In addition, I spent the next solid hour trying to seat that bead with air. I tried doing it the same way I got it the first time, but I couldn't get it to maintain any grip on the rubber. If you slide the rim far enough the seat the front bead, then the back bead lets go. And vice-versa.

After a while I went and grabbed the starting fluid. Shot some in there, put the flame to it, and.. it caught fire. Put the fire out, try it again. Same thing.

Blast it out with air, try it again. This time a thunderous VWOOM! and the tire beads seated nicely in place. And before I could trigger the air chuck, the top bead fell right back down off the rim.

So I was sweaty, and frustrated, and my back was killing me, so I finally gave up.

Later on I ordered an inner tube, took a shower and a bunch of ibuprofen, rubbed some Capsacin on my lower back and put on a back brace.

It appears that the "break the bead" ballast method works best on a dry tire, especially one that's been installed for a while.

But on new tires going onto wet rims, I currently have a 50% catastrophic failure rate.

So I'm going to have to figure out how to pump the ballast into a tube. Full stop.

Bob

Sorry to hear about your trouble. Have you tried the strap tricks? Used it many times successfully myself for getting the tire to touch the rim.

Eugen wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 6:22 pm Sorry to hear about your trouble. Have you tried the strap tricks? Used it many times successfully myself for getting the tire to touch the rim.

I presume you mean ratchet strap around the centerline of the tire? I didn't try that. Perhaps if that had been my method in the beginning, it wouldn't have even happened. But then that reduces the interior volume to pour in the ballast as well. So perhaps I could get in MOST of the ballast and finish with a pump. But it now seems pretty risky. RV antifreeze was $2.70 last time I bought it in 2021. Now it's $3.98. Almost a 50% price increase in a year and a half.

It's a good thing inflation is in check, right?

I'll try the strap trick this evening to see if I can get it to seat without a tube. That would be at least a small victory.

Bob

Been a while since I loaded tires. But. I use a tube in the tire. I then use a pump off a small tow behind sprayer. Hook up the the hose to the valve stem. Put the suction tube into a bucket filled with liquid. And pump away.

Sorry to hear of your trouble Bob. That makes for a long frustrating day. And hurting on top of that. Not fun.
I think we all have those sort of days. And any thing I say won’t help matters much. But I feel your pain and frustration. Best to walk away and regroup. Look at it another day.


Noel

At this point I have to decide whether to proceed with the inner tube or to go the tubeless route. I will say that I'm now a little nervous about spinning the rim inside the tire under heavy torque. It really seems like very little friction between the rim and the bead, especially with the glycol in there lubricating everything.

And because the liquid isn't compressible, I think the pressure in the tire may not even be pushing outward on the bead as effectively as if it were full of air. I'm not at all certain, but that's the way it seems in my head.

So if I go the tube route, at least the bead and rim can be dry, with the liquid captured inside the tube.

That seems like it would lessen the chance of spinning a bead loose under heavy pulling.

And if I DO go with a tube, do I go ahead and put a tube in the in first tire that's already done, to head off problems down the road?

Bob

We use 2x4s and 4x4 blocks, a trick at our shop. Placing short blocks stacked on the floor and laying the sidewall of the tire on them and then step on the rim in the middle. Your weight will help seat the first bead. Then flip the tire and wheel over and place sidewall on blocks again and lightly step on wheel. Now you can seat that second bead with air. You could liquid fill at this point too. Sometimes our shop gets bias tires and they come banded on a pallet and are distorted/ crushed. We take blocks and spread the tire wide apart and place 2x4 blocks in between the bead to hold it open. Place in the sun for a bit and the wheel will open up. Helps with seating the bead when installing on the wheel. Nothing beats a cheetah bead blaster. Has made life much easier on the frustration level when your at the tire machine.

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When I loaded my backhoe tires I used an rv water pump. Mine are loaded with rv antifreeze. Laid them down and periodically stopped filling and burped the air out. Worked amazing easy. Those tires I have are about dry rotted and want to replace them soon. I have my pump ready when the time comes.

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I feel your pain Bob! Sorry you had a bad go of it, but at least it’s a 50% success rate!
I would vote for the tube in the tire and leave the other one that already filled alone. Might make for a good test. besides you already did the work and if it ain’t broke why fix it!

There are some good videos on YouTube on setting up a pump for filling tubes. I’ve alway seen tires with liquid ballast use tubes. But they were filled with calcium chloride, so much more corrosive.

Jancoe wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 9:39 pm We use 2x4s and 4x4 blocks, a trick at our shop. Placing short blocks stacked on the floor and laying the sidewall of the tire on them and then step on the rim in the middle. Your weight will help seat the first bead. Then flip the tire and wheel over and place sidewall on blocks again and lightly step on wheel. Now you can seat that second bead with air. You could liquid fill at this point too. Sometimes our shop gets bias tires and they come banded on a pallet and are distorted/ crushed. We take blocks and spread the tire wide apart and place 2x4 blocks in between the bead to hold it open. Place in the sun for a bit and the wheel will open up. Helps with seating the bead when installing on the wheel. Nothing beats a cheetah bead blaster. Has made life much easier on the frustration level when your at the tire machine.

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That's precisely the method I was following, but that rubber ring just wouldn't get any traction on the rim. If I had it to do over again, I'd have put the ratchet strap around the middle like Eugen suggested. But I didn't think of it. And at this point I don't want to risk another $65 worth of antifreeze. So I'm going to wait for my inner tube and pump to arrive, and just pump it in there. Slower, but safe and secure.

Bob

I would put a tube in the other tire too. Once you perfect the filling system on the one have to do yet. It won’t be so bad to do the other. That’s my opinion.

Noel

I would tube the other tire as well rather than have another uncontrolled loss of fluid.
When I was doing a little research on filling tubes there was talk about an air/water valve to aid in filling them and getting the air out. My tire guy quoted me $150 to do mine, tubes, Rim Guard, and labor. I think I'll let him do it.

Timj wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 4:35 pm I would tube the other tire as well rather than have another uncontrolled loss of fluid.
When I was doing a little research on filling tubes there was talk about an air/water valve to aid in filling them and getting the air out. My tire guy quoted me $150 to do mine, tubes, Rim Guard, and labor. I think I'll let him do it.

That's really cheap if you mean both tires. I've just spent $63 after tax on the juice for a single tire. And the tubes are $15 each, and that's buying a slightly undersized tube. The full-sized tubes are $24 each.

Bob

thebuildist wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 8:12 pm

Timj wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 4:35 pm I would tube the other tire as well rather than have another uncontrolled loss of fluid.
When I was doing a little research on filling tubes there was talk about an air/water valve to aid in filling them and getting the air out. My tire guy quoted me $150 to do mine, tubes, Rim Guard, and labor. I think I'll let him do it.

That's really cheap if you mean both tires. I've just spent $63 after tax on the juice for a single tire. And the tubes are $15 each, and that's buying a slightly undersized tube. The full-sized tubes are $24 each.

Bob

yes that was for the pair, the guy was thinking it was kind of a lot for a garden tractor and was trying to get me to go without tubes but the side walls don't look that good on the 448, they hold air but i don't know for how long. I looked at tubes with the right valves for loading on line and they were in the $30 some dollar range and was going to do the RV antifreeze myself but it has really went up in price. My tire outfit does a ton of AG work so I'm guessing they buy a lot of Rim Guard, the service guys always have big totes of it on their trucks.

When using tubes with liquid . Suck All the air out of the tube after seating the beads . It make filling easier . Fill tires laying down . Can be done with pump or gravity pail. With the fill hose/fitting threaded on to valve burp the air from between the tire and tube through the valve stem hole in the rim . When tube is full , put in valve core and add air to about 6 psi . Dry valve area and cap with good cap , not cheap plastic cap. Use crane or BDG to stand up wheels and mount on tractor .

Years ago when "Fix a flat" had a brass screw on end on the on the hose, I salvaged that brass end to make my own hose to mount to my pump. I leave the valve stem in with the new tube already being flat and pump the washer fluid in. The pump I have will just barely build enough pressure to seat a soapy bead. With the tire hydraulically seated I then drain out 1/3- 1/2 gallon to get the pressure down

That hose works well when put on the inlet of the pump for draining the tube when a tire change is needed. Otherwise to drain a tube I have used a slide on hose on the valve stem and shot high pressure air past the valve stem and rim to fill the void between the tire and tube, with care a needle for filling a basket ball works well for this


Gordy

All helpful input.

David's advice was to inflate the tube just enough to seat the bead and then deflate the tube. And I wasn't sure how to go about doing that. But the sports ball needle will be a great way to deflate the tube after the bead is set.

As it turns out, last week I helped my son install a tankless water heater. And I hauled home his old standard and 40 gallon water heater. It's 20 years old but nothing really wrong with it.

I've since stripped all the shell off of it and the burner parts and have welded and plugged up all of the threaded ports except one at the top and one at the very bottom.

My plan as of now is to use that tank as a pressure pot. I'll fill it with the liquid ballast and then shoot air in the top and let the air pressure force the liquid out of the bottom spout.

I'll limit the air pressure in the upper chamber to no more than about 20 psi. But that should allow me to effectively inflate this tire with the liquid.

And I already know that about 14 gallons will almost but not completely fill the tire. Which will leave a little bit of necessary air cushion. So I can just proceed and shoot all 14 gallons in and top it off with enough air to give it whatever PSI is best.

Speaking of that, what is everyone's advice for how many PSI to run it at? The tire is rated for 2,400 lb at about 35 PSI.

But the liquid is not compressible. So since there's a small air chamber that is compressible, I think that the tire may hold its form under heavy load with only 10 PSI or so in it.

So to haul this backhoe around, with the tire almost completely full of liquid, how much PSI does everyone think I should be running?

Bob

I can only make a guess. My 648 does not have fluid in the tires and I don’t have traction issues. I think your idea of 10psi is probably about right. The tires on my larger tractor liquid filled or not I run 10 to 12 psi.

I had to knock off for the night, but it looks like the pressure pot concept is going to work. I put 4 gallons of ballast in my heater tank and pressurized the top of the tank to 3 or 4 psi, and I can hear liquid squirting into the tube. But I'm going to make a small change. I currently running from tank bottom port to garden hose to one of those tube liquid filling adapters (the kind with the bleeder button) to the tube. But that only works with the valve core removed from the tube. So after I've filled up about 10 gallons worth, I'm going to take off the garden hose and filler adapter and reinstall the valve core and then replace the garden hose with a regular air hose with chuck. Because I'll lose a bunch of liquid in the act of removing the filling adapter and installing the valve core. So before the liquid gets above the level of the schrader valve, I'll go ahead and get the tube ready for its final pressurized state.

The only downside is that progress will be a little slower, and I'll be seating the tire beads with only about 10 psi. But as slippery as they are, with the fact that they're literally falling back off the rim, tells me that the final 10psi is all that's keeping the beads seated anyway. It's not like I can push them "fully into place so they'll stay put". The instant you remove the pressure, they let go anyway. So 10PSI will just have to seat the beads good enough.

Bob

Don't you love it when your brain plays a trick on you?

Yesterday afternoon and evening I got the first of the tubes installed with the liquid ballast in it and all inflated nicely to 10 PSI. It looked great. After supper I went down and drained the liquid ballast out of the first tire, the tubeless one, and pumped the liquid ballast into my pressure pot, installed the tube into the tire, and hooked it up to let it fill the liquid ballast into the tube overnight.

I only pressurize the pot to about 14 psi so that no matter what happened it couldn't over pressurize the tire very substantially.

As it turns out the whole system had about 8 psi in it this morning. So I shot a little more air in it to bring it up to the 10 or 11 PSI and happily rolled the tire out to the tractor and got it installed on the lugs and snugged it up real nice.

Victory!

Then I went back to either start cleaning up the mess or get the other tire and go put it back on the tractor.

That's when my brain asked me, " do you suppose that copper coupling is going to hurt that tube?"

You see in the first iteration when I was using the battery operated pump to pump the ballast from the tub through the crack in the bead, I had wedged a 3/4 in copper coupling between the tire and the rim to hold the discharge tube of that little pump and not pinch it. And somewhere in the process that coupling slipped and fell down inside the tire. And I decided it wasn't really going to hurt anything. It would tumble around harmlessly inside that tire for a hundred years before it made any meaningful wear or damage. So I decided to ignore it.

But since then I broke the bead and drained all the fluid and stuffed a new tube up in there. And missed my chance to easily retrieve that coupling. Because I forgot it was in there.

Forgot, that is, until I had the whole thing all filled up and pressurized and bolted back on the tractor. That's when my brain remembered the coupling. Ugh.

So the wheel is now back in the tub draining the contents of the tube out so that I can poke around in there searching for that goofy coupling.

All because my brain didn't think it was important to remind me of this information in a timely manner.

This is not my fault. It's my brain's fault. I blame him.

Bob, I’ve found sometimes I get in a hurry and forget to do something. Lately I have been waiting on some part of a project and let the brain think up ideas on how to do something. Some better and some not. It seems when I was working all the time I was always in a hurry. Now that I’m retired I have to keep telling myself to slow down and enjoy the moment. Harry

Finally.

For what it's worth, referring all the way back to the very first post: With 10 PSI in these tires, I can just push on them with my upper body weight and squish/bounce them downward. They're quite squishy, not nearly as solid/firm as I'm used to car tires being. And I cannot imagine that the turf tires were more squishy than this.

So if I can get away with only running 10PSI when the hoe weight is added to them, then they're going to ride nice and cushiony indeed.

It's looking like a win so far!

Bob

One last post, pictures of the tires installed on the tractor.

I think they'll be just fine.

Bob

They look to me like the perfect replacement for the stock tires! Nicely done Bob!

They really look great! I’m interested in your opinion of them after you get to use them for a bit.

Those tires sure do look nice on it. My 6018bh has the 29x12.50x15 tires. They are loaded with rv antifreeze and I run 20 psi on those rears. I think you will do just fine with 10 psi.

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