Howdy,
Ok, I'd _really_ like to meet whoever thought this one up in a dark alley
with a lead pipe in my hand...
I just spent 1.5 hours trying to get a god d*mned snowblower tire to take
air. Its a Honda snowblower, 14x4-6 tubeless tire, with two piece rims.
First off, the damn rim halves separate when you unbolt the rim from the
snowblower's hub, instantly deflating the tire. Geniuses. Guess how easy
it is to hold the two rim halves together with the rubber gasket in the
center, while you try and line up the bolt through the outer rim half,
rubber gasket, inner rim half, and into the hub! That's right... Not
easy. [I later (after the screaming, see below) realize that I should
have put longer bolts in from the backside and lined everything up then
used nuts on the front side.]
So then you do all this and put air into the tire.
That's when you discover that the tire designer was the brother of the
wheel/hub designer. Instead of something crazy like having the entire
tire all be one peice, we have a plastic ring that sits around the inside
of the tire bead to give it shape. Which, of course, isn't in the right
place anymore. And which requires either 1mm fingers made of
flexible titanium to get it back into place with the wheel on the hub or
you take the wheel back off the hub and start over.
Somewhere in here I started screaming incoherently.
Anyway, I gave up.
So are there any ways to make this easier? Can I (crazy thought though it
may be) weld the rim halves together to make one actual air tight rim,
then put a tire on it? Do they make some sorta snow blower tires that
don't require air in the first place?
Maybe I'll just chisel a damn tire outta wood.
Its things like this that make you wonder how man ever started walking.
Mark
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