Today’s adventure: tire repair the way they never taught you in shop!

I have a ~13 year old snowblower. Its been great. Built right here in Kitchener-Waterloo by MTD. The tires, however, have been awful. It takes a 10″ snow-hog. The ones that came with it were on plastic rims and were subject to a safety recal (which I ignored). They leak constantly, and its a real pain. To fix it, i put a strap around the circumference, wrench it tight, which pushes the sidewalls out to the rim, and then put some air in. Its like every time it snows I find this needs doing. So, i did what you would expect, I went and got a pair of tubes. Those were even worse, nearly impossible to install, and they shift and leak through the valve stem. So I went and bought a new tire to replace the worse of the two, and, to my surprise, the exact same part number is different:

And, not only is it lop-sided now, but, it still leaks. Argh.

OK, lets not panic. Maybe a little trip to home depot will find me the answer. And here it is (I think). Expanding foam. It says windows + doors, but i’m pretty sure + tires is implied. Here you can see I’ve prepped the tire by removing the valve stem (and the tube from that attempt).

First, we are going to put some gloves on. Last time I used this stuff without gloves, well, its hard to get off.

And here we are all full. It came out the valve hole a bit, i’ll clean that off later when its fully hard with a utility knife. But I’m pleased to report the tire is now fully ‘poofed’ and seems pretty sturdy. I’ll give it a few hours to harden, and see how it goes!

Now, this might be ‘unorthodox’. And I’m pretty sure all of you tire-repair professionals are gnashing your teeth at what that rim will be like inside. But, I just don’t care. These are wretched plastic rims with average rubber outers. They go a maximum speed of 5km/hr, and a distance of about 125m down my driveway. There’s no suspension, no brakes, and nothing life-critical here.

As always, add your comments below. 

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