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