Kent B
Silver Member
Here is my situation and what I decided to do to fix it.
I recently purchased a 1984 Ford 1710 2wd tractor. It was is good running order relatively speaking.
The wheels were rusted as you will be able to see from the pictures. Even though the tires were holding air they were (looked to be) the originals. Dry rotted and cracking badly.
I had the tires dismounted and noticed that the front rims had rusted out around the valve holes. I hunted far and wide for new replacements but it seemed that the closest match was not exactly perfect. The center hole in my rims are only 3 inches. Most of the ones I saw for sale were 6 inch center hole.
After reading a thread on TBN I discovered an excellent idea. Just drill a new hole on the other side of the rim where it was not rusted and patch the old hole.
That is what I decided to do. I was going to weld the mending plates on with my cheap'o' mig welder but with my poor welding skill I would end up with splatter and slag that would require grinding and sanding afterward.
I decided to use J B Weld instead. I have used it before on lots of small jobs and it worked very well.
I picked up a small section of steel flat bar from ACE hardware and cut off some mending plates. I cut two pieces for each rim. I hammered and bent them to match the contour of the rims.
I mixed the JB weld and coated the area on the rims and the entire surface of the mending plates.
Since I planned to put tubes back in the tires I wanted to make sure that there were no sharp corners exposed. The corners of the plates got smoothed out with the grinder before mounting.
Once the J B Weld started to harden up slightly I pushed the excess back up around the edges of the mending plates to help keep a smooth edge.
I don't know if anybody else had tried this so I thought I would share my experience. The test will come after I get the new tires and tubes mounted. That will be later on.
So right now I will show you what it looks like before during and after. More pictures for after will come later.
I recently purchased a 1984 Ford 1710 2wd tractor. It was is good running order relatively speaking.
The wheels were rusted as you will be able to see from the pictures. Even though the tires were holding air they were (looked to be) the originals. Dry rotted and cracking badly.
I had the tires dismounted and noticed that the front rims had rusted out around the valve holes. I hunted far and wide for new replacements but it seemed that the closest match was not exactly perfect. The center hole in my rims are only 3 inches. Most of the ones I saw for sale were 6 inch center hole.
After reading a thread on TBN I discovered an excellent idea. Just drill a new hole on the other side of the rim where it was not rusted and patch the old hole.
That is what I decided to do. I was going to weld the mending plates on with my cheap'o' mig welder but with my poor welding skill I would end up with splatter and slag that would require grinding and sanding afterward.
I decided to use J B Weld instead. I have used it before on lots of small jobs and it worked very well.
I picked up a small section of steel flat bar from ACE hardware and cut off some mending plates. I cut two pieces for each rim. I hammered and bent them to match the contour of the rims.
I mixed the JB weld and coated the area on the rims and the entire surface of the mending plates.
Since I planned to put tubes back in the tires I wanted to make sure that there were no sharp corners exposed. The corners of the plates got smoothed out with the grinder before mounting.
Once the J B Weld started to harden up slightly I pushed the excess back up around the edges of the mending plates to help keep a smooth edge.
I don't know if anybody else had tried this so I thought I would share my experience. The test will come after I get the new tires and tubes mounted. That will be later on.
So right now I will show you what it looks like before during and after. More pictures for after will come later.
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