1942 Oliver 60 Standard - New Front Tires

With an old tractor, purt-near everything that needs fixin' is a chore. The tractor desperately needs new front tires. One is a retread and is part way through the delamination process, and the other tire is just plain old and cracked. Also, they are truck tires, not tractor tires (the horror). Below is a photo of the retread. You can kind of make out the separation between the layers.

Let me start by saying, yes, I could have taken the wheels and tires to the local tire shop and paid to have the work done. If I'd have done that, they would have found (SPOILER ALERT!........) all the rust holes in the wheels and I would have had to buy new wheels. Sometimes there is a slight method to my madness, as I certainly didn't want to buy something I could possibly fix.

This is my first try at using my Harbor Freight Manual Tire Changer. Yes, it's very manual, and it doesn't help that the tires are so stiff. I'm sure a tire that hasn't been crustifying over the last 40 or 50 years would be a whole lot easier to get off a wheel. And it doesn't help that the wheel is rusted through in spots. The tire changer did prove to be very useful, as it broke the beads fairly well and held the tire and wheel at a comfortable height (and not on the ground) when prying the tires off. As you can see, the rusted wheel rim folded up when prying up the tire bead. Thin spots in the steel weren't visible because of the paint.

That's gonna take some welding to get the wheel back to operational condition. I'm guessing these wheels are original to the tractor based on their condition. Contrast that with the one rear wheel I recently had the pleasure of messing with (see video at the bottom). It looked fairly new, as in maybe "only" 30-40 years old and not 80+.

Lots of thick scale needs to be chipped off.

This is just the stuff that happened to fall out of the wheels when removing the tires. The wheels had at least that much that I later chipped off.

I didn't want to leave the tire changer out in the weather while I fixed the wheels, so I unbolted it from the pallet. Look what was left behind when I pulled the changer off.

It's been a couple of days after I did the work shown above. This first wheel (below) is the one that the lip folded up. I used a MIG welder and just started laying down some weld. With any piece of metal this rusty, when welding it, the holes always grow in size because the surrounding metal is so thin that the weld blows through. I just kept at it until the weld hit a thick enough portion of metal to not blow out. There were a few smaller holes that also needed welding.

These next two photos are after grinding 3/4 of the weld away.

The valve stem hole in one wheel was rusting out.

Here's after a lot of weld.

Looks pretty good.

This is the second wheel that needed some love. I didn't get an after-repair shot.

One tire on, one to go.

Both wheels are repaired and two new tires and tubes installed. I did manage to punch a hole in one tube while using the tire irons. I was being so very careful with the tire irons but still managed to do it. The repair process to pull one bead back off the wheel, fish out the tube, patch the hole, then stuff the tube back in and pry on the one bead and air up the tire. I wasn't having a good time.... But the outcome looks great. A nice Fall day here in the Pacific Northwest.

The video below this next sketch is of me reversing one of the rear tires on the wheel. Rear tractor tires are directional and are meant to have the V tread pointing forward when looking at the top of the tire. Concurrently, wheels are made with an offset, meaning the wheel's mounting flange isn't in the exact center of the wheel. It's offset to one side, so if the wheel is mounted one way, the centerline of the wheel/tire is closer to the tractor, and if the wheel is then moved to the other side of the tractor (to keep the tread pattern going the right direction), the centerline of the wheel/tire is further out from the tractor. This feature is designed to give the farmer a slight track width adjustment. In the sketch below, the wheel outline is in blue, the axle flange is yellow, and the fender is green. You can see the wheel is closer to the fender in the right sketch and further from the fender in the left sketch.

The problem is, both tires were mounted to their respective wheels with the wheel offset the same direction, so when the wheels and tires were bolted to the tractor (and with the tread pattern going the correct direction), one tire was closer to the tractor and the other tire was further from the tractor. It wasn't a bunch of difference but to me it looked goofy, thus the need to dismount one of the tires and remount it in the reverse direction, then flip the entire wheel/tire around. I don't know how long it took but it was several hours. The good news is, the wheel is in excellent condition, and not all rusted out like the to front wheels seen above. Slightly bad news, I poked a hole in the tube with one of the tire irons while prying a tire bead off the wheel, so I had to patch it. The rubber cement in the tire repair kit was ancient and thick, so I'm hoping the patch holds. Only time will tell if I have to pull out the tube and do the patch over.