Thoughts on filling Rear tires

[clemsonfor]

This is a little different that the normal topic that we have beated to death.

Im not asking should i do it or what with, but how.

I have decided on -20 winshield washer fluid for fill. I have a drill (cheap) pump i bought for this. The plan was to fill 5 gallon bucket with Fluid then just let it run, checking on it every 10 mins or so and adding as needed. Problem that i have found in tests i have done with just water so far is... The threads on the drill pump are suppose to fit a garden hose i think, but they dont, there about 1/16 to small even with generous thread tape the hoses never tighten down good, and leak or fall off. I plan on going to Lowes today to try and find a pvc fitting that will screw on well to it and then glue a reducer to that to get it to 1/2 or so then hose clamp a hose onto the pvc so that i can then lay the drill on the ground and pump, which should make priming easier. NOw i have the pump directly screwd to the hose adapter thing on the rim as the pump is 2 male ends and i did not fell like cutting more hose up than necessary. Being that high in the system its hard to keep and get primed but still doable.

Then i just stopped and took a good length of hose and just poured it full of fluid and used air to tryy and force it in there. It goes but not to well as you need to bleed the air off, and gravity feeding it that way will take days!!!


Any thoughts any of you can think of to help me with this one?

 

[HCJtractor]

I would get a better pump. A small 12 V or 120 V pump from Northern is fairly cheap and would work much better than a drill pump. Also get a hose end adapter from Gemplers or Tractor Supply that attaches to the valve stem. It has a button that allows the release of pressure build up so that as you pump, you can release accumulated pressure. These pumps have 3/4" hose fittings. I would fill a big plastic trash can with the fluid, insert the intake hose, attach the outflow hose with the adapter to the stem, and start pumping. Every so often, push the button to release the pressure.

Or take the tractor to a local tire company. My local tire dealer just filled mine for $60 (I provided the fluid) I was just to busy to do it myself this time around.

 

[boggen]

if you have a sprayer (air less sprayer that you hand pump, back pack sprayer, atv sprayer, larger size sprayer, etc...) just pickup some fittings to go that route. most hand spray guns, you can remove from hose. and put a different spray gun on if you wanted to. but in this case. go with to the tire nipple.

if you are going to do a 5 gallon bucket, get yourself a bulkhead and drill through side of 5 gallon bucket near the bottom edge. so you do not have to deal with priming. i have used metal electrical water tight fittings as bulkheads before. they normally come with a rubber 0-ring/gasket and i give a little silicon on everything before i tighten the electrical water tight fitting together on the drum.

you can pickup a cheap sprayer pump from most agriculture / feed stores. for DIY your own sprayer but in this case used to fill tire up with liquid. grainger, harbor freight, farm and fleet, farm king, etc...

if you want to do gravity flow, in order to let air bubbles out the easiest. you need to go from the tire nipple. up to say 1" pipe size as quickly as possible from the tire nipple. and extend pipe upwards. suggest getting some fittings to go up to say 2" to 4" pipe so you create a custom funnel.

normally garden hose threads do not get extremely tight. and you rely on the rubber washer inside the female end to make a water tight seal.

WARNING, this idea can be very dangerous....
tire nipple on tire -> aquarium hose down to ground -> get adapters to go up to 4" pipe -> 4" pipe a few feet in length. -> tee -> air compressor connection on one side of tee, top of tee put a threaded end cap.
((fill 4" pipe with fluid and then connect air compressor to top of 4" pipe and let the air compressor push fluid down and out of the pipe and into the tire.))
((why dangerous? pvc pipe can explode violently and causes pieces to go flying every were up to a couple hundred plus feet away))

you might be able to find a saddle tee / needle valve for like a ice maker for the fridge/freezer. and place it on the hose between tire nipple and what ever, to let air out of the tire.

get a tire filler, that has a little lever to clamp onto tire nipple for filling the tire up with air. but instead of attaching it to air hose / air pump, plumb it up to the pump to fill tire with fluid. would make things quick and easy for removing to let air out, and put back on to fill tire up with fluid. the one i have i can remove the valve core puncher out.

==============
most of above is just random ideas off top of my head, and would end up tossing things together of what ever i had on hand.

with above said, you might be better off with like a sprayer pump 12v or 110v unit. they can self prime to some extent. and the cheap little units can create a good amount of pressure, to help reduce time between pumping in liquid and bleeding air out of the tire.

p.s. remove the valve core from the tire nipple if you have not already. if you are using something to push the little thing into the tire nipple so you can put air in.... you are in for some extra work.

p.s. look at the very bottom of your thread, it gives 5 simulair threads. that may have something for you as well.

 

[Car Doc]

Use your ww pump on one of your cars or get one at the parts store and use a small plastic aquarium hose or something similar that will allow air to escape around it where it goes in the tire valve thats all I can think of since you are using ww fluid. Even a plastic hose or air line connector on the end of the tubing might work at the end that is going into the tire valve and let air back out?

We fill automotive cooling systems with vacuum pump and it works great. I dont know how a inner tube would act but I bet it would be ok. Id probably use my engine vacuum to suck all the air out and then put the hose into a 5 gal bucket and let er suck it in you would be surprised how good it works on a car. ( I may come up with some more ideas...)

The draw back I see with my vacuum idea is it may pull the stem inside the tire so think that one out carefully.

 

[Soundguy]

a garden hose seals by gasket pressure.. not threads.. shoot a bead of rtv into the threads.. put a hose gasket in there.. and screw on.. let set and good.

use a burp valve.. fill all the ballast.. then add the water .. burping the entire time.

 

[clemsonfor]

Thats why i like this place!

I never thought of my ATV sprayer. I will fill that tank and just picked up fittings to adapt to the garden hose filler adapter (already had that) and will just turn it on and let it go, burping it occasionally, will be much faster than the drill!!

As for the treads sealling, i know the rubber washer seals it but the threads have to screw on tight enough to pull the male end into the washer to seal it. These will just pull snug then you try and tighten it up more and it strips off the threads(not really strips them but the threads just undue and you can tighten till that point then loose again, tighten then loose again, never really allowing the washer to seal). The thread tape was to try and increase the diameter of the male threads so that they would grab better.

As far as the vacume pump, interesting but id have to do it with a trash can that way or else i would have to kink the hose in the bucket and fill it 3x. Also i dont think i want to use the vacume pump on my A/C recyler for this purpose!!! Plus the adapters may be kind of crazy? Also you pull the valve core out for it. Also i would think the tube would fold over the and pinch the air off in the tube with just a little vaccume?

 

[boggen]

are you sure it is garden hose threads? and not another thread type on the pump that connects to the drill? been there done that. *DOH!* and then moan and complain of not being able to find the correct adapters to get to what i want...


going to assume you have an "on demand 12v pump" on the ATV sprayer. i spent some extra bucks on a higher quality spray gun. that had multi use tip. to change between... jet nozzle, boom style type were i could swap out style of boom tip, 90 degree fitting tip, along with extensions for longer reach.

what i am getting at, you might want to take the tip off your spray gun, and get adapters to go to tire nipple from there. that way you have quick easy way to turn spray pump on/off. granted not all spray gun nozzles have a tip that has threads on it. and trying to get a threaded adapter to fit right next to the on/off handle on the gun is almost impossible on some of them. (at least when i went looking a while back)

 

[clemsonfor]

I have a 15 gallon spot sprayer, not boom compatible. Pump i think is just over 1 gallon a minute (which i can deal with, im in no hurry). I have an on/off switch on the pump itself.

I have boght adapters to fit the 3/8 hose on it (taking the wand off) to adapt up to 1/2 hose, bought a foot of clear vynal hose thats 1/2" then got a half to 3/4 adapter to fit into some garden hose, then i will use a length of garden hose to the Hose end fitting for filling tires.

As far as the threads on the drill pump, its clearly not garden hose but some other thread type or size, i thought it said on it to use with garden hoses, but aparently i either made that up, or just thought since it looked garden hose size; that it was, or either the chineese lost in translation the correct thing to use?? Either way , that does not matter cause im going to use the ATV spot sprayer, its looks to be 2x as fast as the drill anyway.

 

[Car Doc]

It dawned on me why a car will fill with vacuum and a tire wouldn't an engine block has solid walls in the water jackets obviously and therefore can hold a volume of negative pressure roughly equal the the volume of coolant so never mind I am over thinking it.

Yes the ATV tank is a great idea there are some good ideas I never thought about that I have a 16 gallon one too for the garden tractor! :thumbsup:

 

[California]

FWIW here's the adapter I cobbled together to load my tires direct from a garden hose (where I have plenty of water pressure). Adapting from the ATV sprayer to something like this should do the job.

One detail isn't obvious - I had to remove the little nub inside the head, the part that presses on the tire's Schrader valve but is also a check valve.

 

[clemsonfor]

I forgot you have posted this before California. I just bought the one at TSC for something like $6 several years ago. I had tossed it around and not wanted to do it cause i heard it increases clutch wear, then realized it probly wont that much, as im only putting 300lbs on it anyway.

I know im not in the frozen tundra or anything but i dont want to just put water, i fear that it may freeze when we get several cold days, id hate to split my 30 year old tires that will cost $200 to replace!!

As far as getting cold, yes its not like were that cold here in upstate SC, esp last year but the year before that we had sevral snows and one week were we were in the low teens 3 nights in a row and did not get above freezing for 4 days!!! There were hunks of ice on the roads where they were busted out of frozen puddles on the side of the road, snow clung to the ground for over a week at my house. And this was just 2 years ago, not 30 like some remember when they grew up!! I still think of this and just want to put the WWF in just incase which complicates this whole process. Also the wife did not want me to use ethol glycol as she was afraid of a puncture and pets drinking it. If i were to use this though i would just get a 100ft hose pour 1 gallon into the hose then use my filling device like you have to fill it the rest of the way.

 

[kenmac]

It's a pain. But, I just put in water & drain when it gets cold. BIL says he hasn't ever drained his tires & never had a problem

 

[Pete Judd]

I looked at putting beetjuice in my rears on the 186D, to local tire store will do it for around 100 bucks. I think that by the time you buy all that 20/20 and the adapters, you won't save much. Just my 2 cents.

 

[clemsonfor]

UM not really. I used a code online. I got my WW fluid for about $1.25 a gallon or so? I paid right at $40 for 30 gallons of the -20F stuff. I just spent $3.50 to convert my sprayer to fill them, and i paid about $6 for the adapter, but thats a sunk cost now as i have had it so long. Charts say my rears hold between 17-20 gals? I think its really 17 so i have 15 gals per tire and i will fill the remainder with water as -20 here is a bit much.

 

[Soundguy]

i wonder if it was 3/4 pipe and not 3/4 hose thread?

 

[Soundguy]

i'm glad i'm in florida.. i can use 90% water and a lil something else like rv af or ww fluid and not get freezes in our very mild / short winters.

 

[clemsonfor]

I looked up RV antifreeze. Best i found was $4 gallon plus i have 40% off online coupns fro advance auto. I looked at a chart where i mixed it 30% RV PG to water and the freezing point was only like 30F??? Or maybe that was 25% im not sure, i did the math, yes it would have been less gallon of PG but would of cos more.

 

[Soundguy]

since water freezes at 32'f just about anything in it should drop it lower than 30'f even rust ions..

i wait till just after winter and places usually clearance rv af for 2-3$ a bottle onthe shelves.

I put about 4g in to my water and call it good... but then.. I'm in florida too.

we do get freezing weather.. even occasionally single digits.. just not for too long.. low dips that come back up to doubles. standing open water will freeze.. in bad winds above ground pipes and hoses will freeze.. and stuff.. say 6" under or less MAY freeze.. just about any mix in our water/tires protects us.

if I lived in canade.. might have to do 90/10

 

[clemsonfor]

2 years ago, my outside hose pipes froze for almost 2 weeks in that cold snap. One is a PVC line with just cheap foam insulation on it, and it runs above ground about 18" by a deck. The other has PVC internal in the well house and protrudes as a metal spigot in the side of the brick wll house, which has a halogen 300w light in it the whole time, did not stop at least the spigot from freezing solid for a week or better.

Lucily neither busted.

 

[clemsonfor]

What luck!, my set up with the sprayer was working like a charm, get about 6 gallons in, then realize i hear rushing air??? Look around and find the valve stem is torn and leaking!!!! Great. At least it did it now instead of after all the fluid is in there. Now i will be putting new tubes in, i guess all the monkeying with the tubes did them in. They did not leak a bit before! glad it was now and not when i will be using in next!