Tires and foam and flats and costs...

[Dadnatron]

Purchasing a 5100e - 500hrs.

Purpose is to have a general tractor on 84ac horse farm. There is nothing other than soybeans and old fence rows at this time.

I grew up on a 4020, and quite honestly, I can't ever remember having a flat tire. We were in the sticks... and it would have had to be an odd thing in order to hit something that would go through a tire.

But now, I am on soybean/corn fields in Kentucky. I will be pulling posts and fence with an FEL mounted Intimidator. Trash trees and honeysuckle for the most part and then general cleaning up of the place. Pulling a mower as well as drilling/overseeding the fields into grass. Basically for the first couple years, I will be building the farm from the ground up.

I am debating the utility of foaming the tires. As far as general use down the road, I don't think it will be necessary. But in the 2-3 year interim, I can at least SEE some merit. However, I don't know whether it will really be worth the cost and ride roughness I hear about. I will need to add weight to the back anyway, so the weight would be a benefit. I was going to just add Rim Guard but as I began thinking, I thought about foam and never having to worry about flats again.

I will only be on dirt (or almost only) so wear and tear on tread will be slow. I don't know exactly how long tread tends to last on R1s in this type of situation. But again, I don't ever remember specifically changing a tire growing up.

RimGuard costs is $350 per rear tire.

Foam is a significant amount more.
Rear tires would add 1050 lbs per tire at a cost of $ 1450 per tire
Front tires would add 350 lbs per tire at a cost of $ 550 per tire

This is really steep... and I could pay for a lot of flat tire fixes for this cost. BUT... down time would be non-existant.

How often do you get flats? I've heard, although I have not confirmed, that you can run SLIME or a version of it, with RimGuard. Is this true?

 

[4570Man]

I have never flattened a R4 tire.

 

[prichard]

I had a flat 1st week on tractor. There were some kind of weed trees with 2" thorns. Local tire shop plugged for free.

 

[hosspuller]

The question is how much downtime can you afford vs the foam cost. The most critical job my tractor has is haying. Downtime could be the difference between a full barn of sweet hay or a mouldy mess. Yet, my conventional air tired, tractor has been reliable enough over 20 years.

 

[RjCorazza]

That is a lot of money for insurance against a flat. I rolled a front R4 tire off the rim at the beginning of our NE blizzard this past winter. Having 15 residential plow contacts and 35" of snow, I was blowing spit bubbles. Not quite the same issue, as apparently I let the pressure get low from a slow leak until the tire came off the bead. That was the only flat I have had in 20 years.
I am certainly not a tractor tire expert, but I will likely keep a set of tubes, plugs, and ether on hand in the future. I feel relatively confident I could overcome anything short of a severely damaged tire with these items.

 

[rd_macgregor]

I've had three flats since I started tractoring in 2006, all on front tires. The first two were working in the woods and involved chance encounters with sticks poking out/unseating the valve stem. The most recent was like RjCorazza; I let the pressure get low until the bead broke loose.
That does seem like a lot of money to avoid a very rare circumstance...but a bit of down time isn't quite as critical for me as it might be for a "real" farmer...someone whose livelihood depends on reliable equipment.

 

[EddieWalker]

When my tractor was new, I rarely got flats on it. But over time, each flat added up and eventually I had to add tubes to the front tires. I rarely get a flat on the back tires, but eventually it got to the point I felt I was dealing with flat tires all the time. It was only $8 to get it fixed, but it ruined my day because I couldn't do what I wanted to do.

I think it was $200 to foam the front tires. The weight was a bonus because it added traction and stability. I also bought brand new R1 tires since my previous ones where about half worn out. It's been about 6 years since I did this and it was one of the best things I've done to improve my tractor. If you saw all the damage to those tires today, you would wonder how they even work. The treads are still over half there, so there is no need to replace the tires, but there are chunks missing out of the tires, and some holes that after a rain, water comes out of them.

I have no idea what tears up my tires. I do bush hog saplings, so maybe going over those one inch stumps does it. I probably get one or two flats on the rear tires per year max. I don't feel that they are worth the money to have them foamed.

 

[jim44]

Back when I was working in mesquite pastures, I slimed the fronts and just let the backs take care of themselves. In about thirty years of tractor working, I don't recall ever having a flat on the rear (ag) tires.

 

[pmsmechanic]

I live 20 -30 miles from a tire repair shop. The 20 mile tire shop takes ages so quite often it's faster to drive the extra 10 miles to the other tire shop.

I usually repair my own flat tires. By the time I drive to town and back....

I use plugs for quick repairs. Most times you don't even need to remove the tire. Later when I'm going to town I take the tire off and have a patch installed as plugs don't seem to last long term. I run tubes in my front tires as I seem to get less flats that way. I also install patches in tires myself but if I'm going to town anyway ... It's so much easier to let the young guys at the tire shop do the fixing.

I can repair a lot of tires for the money you are talking about and with using plugs for repairs there is very little down time.