I figured it was time I put a rear tire on with some tread, being winter and
all. I decided to use the spare wheel, swap out the rubber and then mount
it in place of the current rear wheel. Here's a shot of the spare, still
plenty of life left in it if it were summer.
http://tinyurl.com/2ke8he
Here's the current pusher, the winter roads have deposited lot's of salt and
crud on everything, as you can see.
http://tinyurl.com/33mdek
http://tinyurl.com/2jck3j
Here's the new tire.
http://tinyurl.com/2usuhw
With a packed garage I have no room to work, so the Harbor Freight tire
changer was pulled out into the driveway. No having it bolted down doesn't
make things any easier, but it's manageable.
http://tinyurl.com/2tasgm
A lovely day out for changing a tire.
http://tinyurl.com/2szawh
I used the tire iron supplied with the Ural toolkit to get things started,
then I used the bar that came with the tire changer, with a rag wrapped
around the end. The tool makes short work of getting that top part off the
rim. The beed on these tires it extremely easy to break, no need to use the
built in beed breaker at the base of the changer.
http://tinyurl.com/2q8lhy
http://tinyurl.com/2pcflx
With the top part off (oh, I forgot to mention that I let the air out of the
tire first) I reached in and began to extract the tube.
http://tinyurl.com/37oem5
Next I put some air back in the tube and ran it through s bucket of water
with soap in it to see if there are any holes.
http://tinyurl.com/3yqsc5
Nope, no holes. Next I cleaned up the rim a bit and positioned the new
tire, then got out the dish soap and lubed up the edge of the tire and the
rim.
http://tinyurl.com/2mllpg
http://tinyurl.com/36pwzn
With the new tire haflway on.
http://tinyurl.com/35dd27
Next I put the tube back in started in on the top half of the tire. For
some reason this part gave me a lot of grief. I'm sure there was a trick to
getting it on easier but I'll be damned if I could figure it out. Seemed to
take me forever before I finally figured it out and popped on. The bar that
came with the changer didn't help any, I was able to do it with just the two
tire irons in the end.
My next step was to fill the tube with air and then mount it back where the
spare goes so I could take it to get it balanced (I don't have anything to
balance tires yet). BTW, there was no mark that I could find that indicated
where the lightest (or heaviest) part of the tire was, so I just but it on
without much thought. The tire seemed to take a long time to fill, and with
the compressor going while I was filling it I couldn't hear any leaks. I
turned the compressor off and tried again, as soon as I did I could hear air
leaking out on the opposite side of the tire that the stem was on. Damn, I
must have pinched the tube during all that frigging around while trying to
get the last half of the tire on. I didn't enjoy the prospect of pulling
the tire halfway off and then trying to get it back on again, but at least I
figured out how to do it easily, and I happened to have a spare tube.
I checked the spare tube by putting some air in it and listening but I
didn't hear any leaks. The top part of the tire came off pretty easily, the
tube went in and I got it back on withut much trouble, it was a lot quicker
the second time. I know I didn't pinch the tube this time, but when I went
to fill it I could hear a really slow leak in it. Not nearly as bad as the
other tube, but still a very slight his. Well, time to call it a day. I
could have pulled the tube out, pathced it and put it back in, but I was
tired of messing with this. So I put the tire back on the trunk of the hack
and put everything away. I'll check around next week for a replacement tube
and tackle this again later. Still plenty of rubber on the pusher, even if
the groves are almost gone, so as long as it doesn't snow too much...<g>
After all of that I needed a drink, Shirley a round for anyone that made it
through that.
BTW, I don't care for painted rims. <g>
--
Tud
SENS BS#111 LFS#32 FLF MISFIT Vermort AH#115
http://ah115.com
Sisyphus rides a Triumph
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