4000 series tires purchase

[Gordy]

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

[thebuildist]

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

[JSinMO]

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.

[thebuildist]

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

[thebuildist]

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.

[Harry]

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

[thebuildist]

Finally.

[thebuildist]

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

[thebuildist]

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

I think they'll be just fine.

Bob

[Eugen]

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