Tires Ballasting tires with saline (not calcium chloride)

[canoetrpr]

Just got off the phone with a tire guy from around here. I called to ask what he would charge to ballast the tires on my Kubota L3400.

The quote was high (as all things are around here) - $500 for the two tires which includes tubes and the service call.

He said that he usually fills with saline (sodlium chloride). First time I ever heard of this!. He says he can do calcium chloride if I want but usually does saline as it is a lot less corrosive and says it is good to minus 40 degress Celcius.

Anyone ever heard of ballasting with saline?

 

[skipmarcy]

I've never heard of using salt water but I guess it could work. That price sounds ridiculously high, especially for just salt & water. It only cost me about $130 for methanol for my 2 rears, good to -10 F, installed. It's a simple matter to pump the fluid into the tires, only took them about 5 minutes a tire. I would look elsewhere for the service. Oh yea, if you use methanol, no need for tubes - it won't rot the rims. I just had new tires put on after the methanol had been in there 5 1/2 years and there wasn't a single speck of rust on either rim - they looked brand-spanking new inside.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Retail on a tube is $40 to $50 depending on size. The highest price I've seen on 50# bags of Cal chlor is right at $50. So worst case, $100 per tire for matl. That leaves $300 on the table for a trip to the job site, labor to break the bead down on 2 tires, install the tubes, air back to set bead, mix and pump in fluid, and pack up tools. A GOOD tire man should be able to do that in less than an hour per wheel. Trip to and from site, we'll figure an hour is fair. So that's $100 bucks an hour for his time. Not cheap, but not unheard of for on-site tire service.

Never heard of using "rock salt". And the claim that it's "not nearly as corrosive" is plain ol' bogus.

For $100 you can EASILY buy tire irons, a pump and the valve stem air bleeder adapter. Then you never have to pay anyone again. Nice to have in the event of a flat tire.

 

[Reg]

I considered it for a while, but remembered that (by definition) the freezing point of a saturated salt solution is 0 degrees F. Common salt is cheap, Walmart has it in 40 lb bags for pool use and I think I figured about 250 lbs for a pair of 17.5L x 24 tires. Eventually I decided that if I needed to move snow at -10 or -15F the frozen flat spots on the tires would be too much trouble, that and I found a local dealer who would sell me RimGuard by the gallon if I brought my own 55 gallon barrels - so I did. $3 a gallon, I got 100 gallons. This came out to $100 more than the local tire guy wanted to fill them with calcium if I delivered the wheels (or whole tractor) to him - no mention of tubes.

The filling wasn't THAT bad, I got the $10 adapter, put the barrels in the bucket and raised it high enough to start the siphon, then sent them up all the way to get the best flow I could - found something else to do while the barrel emptied.

BTW, another part of the equation;
With common salt or calcium you either have rim corrosion or tubes.
With tubes you can't just get the hole to the top and plug it, minor repairs are a MAJOR project.
Plus the enviro issue with calcium or sodium - RimGuard really DOES clean up easily.

 

[john_bud]

Plus the enviro issue with calcium or sodium - RimGuard really DOES clean up easily.

I hear that enviro angle a bit and for some reason it made my skin crawl. Finally the quarter dropped and figured out why. We snowy land folks see salt used on the roads every winter. They are pure white with salt in the spring! The ditches are full of weeds, grass and flowers even after 50-80 years of putting salt down. How much damage is being done when a tire with 40-50-100 # of CaCl2 gets a flat vs the thousands of tons of salt spread by the county every year for the past 50 years?

 

[canoetrpr]

Just got off the phone with another tire guy whose name I got from a local used tractor dealership.

World of difference cause he seems like all he works on are farm tractors. When I told him my tires were 15-19.5 he asked me if it was a "garden tractor"

$120 for two tires + 35 service call + tubes = .. he says about $250. I think I'm going to go for it.

We are behind the times in all things tractor up here in Canada. No one has even heard of loading with anything than calcium chloride (and now saline). If I say RimGuard they say rim what?

If I were doing it myself I'd probably go with something that can be put in without the tube. I've heard of propylene glycol but sounds like it is still toxic just less so. Whats the scoop with methanol - is it toxic, and where do you get it?

 

[Farmwithjunk]

I hear that enviro angle a bit and for some reason it made my skin crawl. Finally the quarter dropped and figured out why. We snowy land folks see salt used on the roads every winter. They are pure white with salt in the spring! The ditches are full of weeds, grass and flowers even after 50-80 years of putting salt down. How much damage is being done when a tire with 40-50-100 # of CaCl2 gets a flat vs the thousands of tons of salt spread by the county every year for the past 50 years?

On more than one occasion, I've parked a tractor with a fluid filled flat tire in my yard. Eiher I didn't know it was leaking, or it just went flat so quick I couldn't get it moved to the shop in time, or any one of a litany of reasons. Point is, it leaked out in the grass.

Always ended up with dead grass for a while. Rain finally would leech the salts out and grass would grow again. The stuff ISN'T nuclear waste, but it isn't totally harmless either.

I'd guess it all depends on the concentration, the amount of water to nuetralize the effects, and the nature of the plantlife exposed to ca/cl as to how much "harm" is done. But in the end, it ISN'T quite as horrible as some would have us to believe.

 

[canoetrpr]

The ditches are full of weeds, grass and flowers even after 50-80 years of putting salt down. How much damage is being done when a tire with 40-50-100 # of CaCl2 gets a flat vs the thousands of tons of salt spread by the county every year for the past 50 years?

You are quite right John. LOTS of salt up here on the roads too. If you drive around crown land in the spring, all the moose and deer come up to the road to lick the salt.

I'd primarily consider something other than CaCl2 on the basis of corrosiveness.

 

[Reg]

I hear that enviro angle a bit and for some reason it made my skin crawl. Finally the quarter dropped and figured out why. We snowy land folks see salt used on the roads every winter. They are pure white with salt in the spring! The ditches are full of weeds, grass and flowers even after 50-80 years of putting salt down. How much damage is being done when a tire with 40-50-100 # of CaCl2 gets a flat vs the thousands of tons of salt spread by the county every year for the past 50 years?

What I find "SKIN CRAWLY" is the attitude that "Theres a lot of it (it being the whatever) in the system (aquifer, air, river, ocean, or wherever) already, so if I contribute a bit more it won't matter".

Can I dump old oil in a hole in my back yard ? Say a gallon or two each oil change ?
How much does it add to what the town, county, state, country, lays down deliberately as "black top" for roads ?
Awwww, trivial, right ?

Where is the "away" that everything we don't want goes ?

"We all live downstream"
{source forgotten, for the moment}

 

[shvl73]

Is the methanol people are using basically windshield washer fluid? If so, its around $1 a gallon. I bought the valve adapter at TSC, its inexpensive.
I had requested the tires filled on mine when I bought it and was told it would be done, as they commonly did so. One day recently (almost 4 years later) I checked the pressure with the valve at 6 o'clock and guess what? No fluid! Nice huh?