Is there a good way of patching holes in the side wall of a tractor tyre? It just needs to look good, and allow the tube inside to be pumped up so that the tractor can be moved for short distances. It will probably never move more than a few hundred metres in the next
50 years!
A patch on the inside of the tyre would probably be a good place to start. Holes and splits can then be filled on the exterior with shavings from a lump of black rubber ( use rubber adhesive to secure ) and sliced flush with a razor blade. Not sure how safe this would be though - definitely not road legal!
Regards,
What pressure do the tyres run at? I thought the pressures and volume of air in large tyres were such that a sudden failure could be hazardous.
We ran our big, wide tractor tyres at 5psi! They're the sort of tyre people are more likely to see on a monster truck.
What pressure are the tubes/tyres to be pumped up to?
The main problem I see is that the tube is only intended to be air tight and it's the tyre that stops the tube from bursting. This means there will be pressure on the damaged part of the tyre.
Guy
Yes that's what I see, if the casing is damaged putting a gaiter inside doesn't address the problem that the outer wall has been damaged, so once the pressure is back in the tube the split bulges open again.
The only decent solution is a "factory" repair where any damaged plies are reinforced and the rubber is re vulcanised, I haven't a clue how it's done but it cost about 40 quid when I last had one done a few years ago.
AJH
Tyre repair kits used to contain a sort of rubberised canvas material for that very purpose - I suppose in those days it was for _any_ purpose, including use with a completely bald tyre at any speed a car could reach.
Tyre repair shops should be able to vulcanise a sidewall patch, or if it's only a small hole you could use a mushroom plug just as you would for a repair to a modern tubeless tyre in its tread area.
Yes, there's a lot of volume, but at perhaps 8psi in a rear tyre.
You'll need big teaspoons to get the tyre off, which may sway things towards ATS.
You can do a non street legal patch with almost anything that adds tensile strength and has flexibility. One thinks of glass cloth and rubber solution for example..
I think whayt I would do is somethung like this.
Get an old inner tube and cut a patch seriously larger than the gash, and gut some proper glass cloth, and then make a sandwich of the inner tube, glass cloth,, and sidewall using rubber solution to get it all to hang together.
Are you trying to do this while it's in situ on the wheel, or can you get at the inside wall of the tyre? If the latter, I'd have thought that a patch of rubber (eg bit of old inner tube) using evostik would do the job. Totally non-street-legal of course.
Are these holes or splits? And, mechanical damage or perished rubber?
If all else fails, take the wheel off and lug it down to a tyre-repair place... they wouldn't normally do sidewall repairs of course but presumably would for off-road use.
David
It obviously depends on how big the hole is!
But if you go to a commercial vehicle tyre repairer you can get a reinforced patch 200x100mm, which would be ok upto about 10mm hole depending on pressure
*Not for road use* -
"Stitch" it with cable ties
Matty F was thinking very hard :
A piece of reinforced rubber, larger than the hole and bolted to the original with four roofing bolts (heads to the tube side) should do it.
In message , AJH writes
Yes.
Find a tyre specialist prepared to deal with agricultural tyres.
They will send it away for a *factory* or *major* repair. Normally takes around 7 days and hard to distinguish the join unless it coincides with lettering on the sidewall. AFAIR the charge is per repair so two holes costs more. 30 to 40 ukp sounds about right.
regards
Don't tractor wheels have split rims?
No.
Recent tyres are tubeless mostly.
I have some split rim trailer wheels but I guess they are ex-army.
regards
The message from Dave Osborne contains these words:
Apparently some do and some don't. IIRC it is the split rims that have killed in the past people unwary enough to undo the securing bolts without deflating the tyre.
The lorry wheels with a separate flange and a locking ring always worried me, if the locking ring wasn't quite seated right it had the potential to launch the flange as it was inflated to ~100psi.
AJH
Actually it's really bad.Lots of holes and long splits and all the rubber is perished. Here's just a small hole:
Now that I think about it, I doubt that it can be repaired without the repair being obvious. How will they match the grey colour :) Which leads me to another question, how can the tyre be kept inflated without bursting? There is a split rim. Possibly fill the inside with solid rubber pieces? Or put a coil of wire around the tube so that it doesn't overexpand? (It's easier to push the tractor around rather than move it with a forklift!)
fill it with foam, the stuff they use for buoyancy tanks? It's past doing anything else with as the plies have rotted.
AJH
It occurs to me that a toroidal piece of vinyl sheeting could be placed on each side of the tube before it is inflated. The tread of the tyre is not worn at all so should be quite strong. Congratulation to everybody for not assuming that this is a cheapskate solution to a problem! Money is no object. The outside of the tyre must look in its present condition.
What on earth is it? If it's something like a TE20 then I can see why you don't want to change them (IIRC around £200 a set for the "right" tyres - that being right according to the vintage tractor men). OTOH it looks like anything you do will be a horrific bodge.
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