Fixing a Wagon Wheel

One of the rear wheels on my wagon has a slow leak. I figured I would find the hole, plug it and post the process of plugging a tire here. Unfortunately, there were no nails, screws or anything to be found sticking out of the tire. Although that would normally be a good thing, in this case there is a leak and the easiest ones to fix are a screw or nail hole.

I took the wheel in to the shop and poured a water and dish soap mix on the tire, around the bead and around the valve stem.

And you can now see the leaking area around the bead.


Here you can see it leaking around the valve stem.


The best fix for this is to remove the tire, replace the valve stem and use some bead lock to stop the leak during re-installation. In our case, this is not a critical high speed wagon. It rarely meets the blacktop. I waited for a warm day, and one that I would be using the wagon, and filled the tire with some fix-a-flat from the local auto parts store.

So far, it's holding.

Welding Pipes to the Bucket to Help Raise Poles

Here we're using the old Lincoln buzzbox welder to add some steel pipes to the front end loader bucket. These old welders are great. I picked this one up for around $50, cleaned it up and installed new leads. Good as new and will do nearly all machinery welds we'll need.

Once the pole raising task is complete we'll knock the pipes off with a heavy hammer and grind off any remaining weld or pipe.

The pipes will help keep the poles from sliding left and right while I guide them up.

All done, ready to get started.