| PM | Quote | Reply | Full Topic |
Joined: Fri Nov 10th, 2017
Posts: 1540
Status:
Offline
Reputation: 
Reputation Points: $user_rep
I got the wheel off and pulled out my tire spoons. I fought with it for a while and finally took it to my bench vice to break the bead. Once I was able to break the bead all the way around a 10 minute struggle with the spoons had the old rubber off a very nasty wheel. I had slimed both front tires about 5 years back because they were leaking. That stuff is nastier than grease.
I made the trek to Harbor Freight with the intention of buying 2 new front tires but they only had one in stock. I also got new valve stems. When I came out of the store this little truck was parked two spaces down from mine. Old school cool.
The new tire eventually went back on the cleaned up wheel after I installed a new valve stem. I tried for about a half hour to get the bead to set and finally went Redneck Engineer on it. I grabbed my torch and a can of starting fluid. I squirted a little bit of either inside the tire an lit it with my torch. POP! The bead was now set and I put 15 lbs of air in it and reinstalled it on the mower.
I grab my grease gun and put 2 squirts of grease in the zerk and it went dead. It was out of grease. I replaced the cartridge with a Shell synthetic that was Blue. The old grease was a synthetic grease I used to use on large satellite drive systems and it was red. I added 3 more pumps until I had purple grease weeping. I cleaned everything up and precoded to mow the lawn.
The 55 minute job of mowing the grass took just over 4 hours. I had plans of mowing and then going to a car show but the show would have been over by the time I got there.
Attachment: Rat Rod.gif (Downloaded 52 times)
____________________
Tony
NE ATL
'04 XLT regular cab 3.slo stepside
Semi retirement