Wheel mod.

[Stormin 9,981]

  Although my C-121, commonly known as the Black Horse, has ag tyres fitted, these are 8-50's.

 

 

  They do tend to be a bit wide for ploughing. Narrower tyres, like 600x12's, would be better. The main problem to fitting narrow rear wheels over here in Merry England, is their scarcity.

  At the end of last year, I acquired a pair of 700x12's plus tubes, as new, for the bargain price of £80. Roughly a saving of £140. So what to do with them? The answer to that question? Well, widening wheels is very common, I'll just go he opposite way. Took a couple of spare wheels to an engineering shop and in exchange for a few beer tokens, I ended up with six wheel parts.

 

 

    The pieces cut out from the centre, I cut once so they could be sprung out to fit round the two wheel parts, to locate them. Then they were tack welded to form a band.

 

 

  A G clamp was used to hold the band in place while welding. Moving it round for every weld. A sash clamp held the two halves together.

  The welds were ground down level with the band top, then filler was applied and smoothed so no sharp edges. Finally tape was wrapped round.

 

 

  The next job was to clean up the wheels ready for painting. Unfortunately the damp weather and lack of capacity of my compressor for big jobs, rendered my blast cabinet useless. So out with electric drill and rotary wire brushes.

 

 

  Not a bad result.

 

  Onward and upward and applied two coats of primer followed by one of grey top.

 

 

 

  No way was I going to struggle fitting the tyres and tubes, so off to a tyre fitters I went this morning.  OOOH! Chunky.

 

 

  Final job is to mask the tyres and apply more coats of silver top coat.

 

BTW. I forgot to mention. I drilled out the valve holes to accept the tubes valve stems.

Edited February 17, 2017 by Stormin

[chris sutton 610]

That's a cool mod Norm, they look really good.

[maxiblue 352]

really nice work

[benji756 341]

very nice work there

[Tankman 3,520]

Great work. Look very stylish  .

[farmer 1,075]

Excellent Stormin, this is exactly what I was planning to do for my commando 8 (looking to use it for inter- row cultivation). Thanks for posting the process. 

[meadowfield 2,616]

Nice work Norm

[Stormin 9,981]

  The wheels got top coated today and then fitted to the tractor.

 

 

 

  The fender was raised by 7/8th's" to give a little more clearance. This showed another mod needed. The hole for the fuel tank filler cap needs enlarging. You can't get hold of the cap.

 

 

  The back edge of the foot plate is fouling the tyre and needs altering to bring it forward. The bottom of the fender will also have to be altered to allow for the mod to the foot plate.

 

 

 

[ohiofarmer 3,280]

 There might be another way to go about this.  I once lost a wheel on a backhoe because the factory forgot to weld both sides of the rim to the wheel center.and the rim cracked. i was able to buy a new [rim only] and re-use my old center by cutting the old one away carefully with a grinder and re-using the wheel center. Perhaps one could find a suitable width wheel ,cut out the center,and use just the rim on the wheel horse center. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is the process.http://www.fordmuscle.com/archives/2006/02/Steelies/

 

 It is not really as difficult as you think to cut the center out of a wheel for re-use or to cut the rim from a wheel center you do not want. In one case, you destroy the unwanted rim and in the other case you destroy the wheel center to get the center and rim  you want  It was actually very easy to eliminate the wheel runout on the backhoe. we made a runout gage from a piece of rebar mounted on concrete blocks and used the tractor to turn the mounted wheel like a giant lathe. Our refurb wheel had less runout when welded than the factory wheel on the other side of the machine

[Stormin 9,981]

As they say. There's more ways to skin a cat, than by chopping it's legs off.

[obone 142]

So do you have to drill out the valve stems anytime you change to tubes? The ones I did were kind of hard to get the valve stem though. Very nice job!

[Stormin 9,981]

  Tubeless valves are smaller. I measured the dia of the tube valve stem and drilled to suit.

 

  Today, I cut off the folded edge of the footplate. This has given 3/8" - 1/2" clearance 'tween tyre and plate. Should be ok without altering anything else. I also enlarged the hole for the fuel filler cap. Paintwork touched up and everything assembled.

 

 

 

And a comparison.

 

 

The difference was a little more than I expected. About 3-1/4".

[smoreau 658]

On 2/19/2017 at 1:22 PM, Stormin said:

  The wheels got top coated today and then fitted to the tractor.

 

 

 

  The fender was raised by 7/8th's" to give a little more clearance. This showed another mod needed. The hole for the fuel tank filler cap needs enlarging. You can't get hold of the cap.

 

 

  The back edge of the foot plate is fouling the tyre and needs altering to bring it forward. The bottom of the fender will also have to be altered to allow for the mod to the foot plate.

 

 

 

 

I added my spacer below the seat stand which raised the fuel tank. This does cause a mod being made to the front tank mount also, but easy to take the cap off. 

 

The tires and rims look great!! I want some now!

[Stormin 9,981]

 The folded edge of  the footplate was cut off and gave 3/8" clearance, 'tween tyre and footplate rear. That should suffice for now. See how things go in use.

 

 

  At some future time, I'll be looking at raising the front to level things out. 

 

  A comparison photo. Measures at 3-1/4.