foot pump oil/grease?

Neither was I. I happened to have a jar of silicone lubrication for assembling plastic gutters and push-fit pipe, and so I used that. That was 5 years ago, and it's worked perfectly ever since.

I guess you need to avoid lubricants which attack rubber, as some will probably get into the tyre inner tubes.

Thanks... I gave it a little multi-purpose grease, and will see how that goes. I only use the pump* on one of the lawn tractor's tyres which has a slow puncture, so it's probably no big deal; worst case it trashes a tyre that already had problems anyway.

• I'll get the tuits together and fix my compressor at some point! :-)

Oh, for the end-plate I drilled and bolted a 1.8" thick washer to it which had just the right diameter hole in the middle for the plunger shaft. Seems to be working like a charm - before that there was so much wear in the end-plate that the pump used to jam partway upon release. Cheapo Chinese junk...

cheers

Jules

maybe the tyre's repairable with a bit of offcut inner tube plus rubber cement. Coat the tube well all over, and push it most of the way into the hole with a tool. Let set & trim.

NT

TBH, I've not checked it to see where the leak is - so I don't actually know if it's a puncture or a beading problem.

I might motivate myself to look at it this year, although the wheel's jammed onto the axle rather well (I even had a brief go at it when I had the whole axle off to do some work on the reversing gear last year). I suppose I could improvise some kind of puller though.

Or I could just get a tube for it - the local farm supply place does them (I'm pretty sure it's tubeless, although I suppose it might have a tube in there...)

cheers

Jules

Used to be graphite grease in my old dirty pushbike pump using days.

The leather still wore out fairly quickly though.

Still, could be worse: Brunel almost had a pneumatic railway working, but for the lack of modern sealing materials and lubricants that wouldn't freeze or get eaten,,,