Foam filled front tire on F mowing deck

JOHNTHOMAS · May 12, 2016

I've replaced the front tires and rims on my F decks a few times over the years and different Fs. Learned the bolts holding the rod holding the tire rim on to the deck would break and replaced them with hardened steel bolts. After wheel falling off and running over tire/rim.
Had a tire deflate on me last mowing season and I just kept mowing. Sort of chewed the tire up. I have a new tire to put on the rim but decided to try foaming a tire/rim that had fallen off a couple years ago and had cut the tire in 3 or 4 places. I filled the tire with home insulating foam till it ran/squirted out all the cut places. Let it dry, cut big hunks of dried insulation off and started mowing. I've mowed with it two mowings now and it looks like a new tire running on the front now. How long will it last? Don't know but I'll keep going with it and if/when it gives up the ghost I'll put the new tire or have the tire shop install the new tire on the rim and go with that till it dies or leaks and then I'll foam it.
Any way, the foam filled tire is holding up well at this point and doing it's job as well as the other one on the other side of the deck.:cool2:

golfbum · May 13, 2016

You know, John, someone makes a foam product that is made for tires. But you must not have had a can of that sitting in your shop. I assume you squirted the foam into the tire valve, which mean since there is not a lot of pressure in the can, the tire beads must be sealed on each side. Tubeless tire I guess? Also, there has to be a hole in the tire large enough to let the air escape. This will be interesting to read future reports about how the "great stuff" holds up as the summer progresses.

JOHNTHOMAS · May 13, 2016

golfbum said:
You know, John, someone makes a foam product that is made for tires. But you must not have had a can of that sitting in your shop. I assume you squirted the foam into the tire valve, which mean since there is not a lot of pressure in the can, the tire beads must be sealed on each side. Tubeless tire I guess? Also, there has to be a hole in the tire large enough to let the air escape. This will be interesting to read future reports about how the "great stuff" holds up as the summer progresses.

Tubeless tires with several cuts from mowing blade when I ran over the tire/rim. I pulled back a cut and squirted until foam squirted out of the three or so other cuts. After it dried/hardened up I broke off the exterior pieces of foam. So far two 3 hour mowing sssions on rough yard has wore off all exterior signs of foam. I saw where others had done the home foaming on you tube with much bigger tires than the ittle ones on the front of my mowing deck. They had to do refills to top off some of them later. I'll report results later in The mowing season.

jcummins · May 13, 2016

I've got a new Tire and tube in the barn to replace one that has a large gash in it with duck tape around the tire. Those tires should come from factory as a solid non air type tire. Keep us posted.

Sigarms · May 16, 2016

John

I put some flat free tires on your old 3060 after having to have those orginal tires keep leaking on me. There was a discussion here in the past on that on this topic, just can't find it right now.

I believe I paid about $100 for both front tires. I probably have 70 hours on them now without any issues. Do keep them well greased after each mowing session.

JOHNTHOMAS · May 16, 2016

Sigarms said:
John

I put some flat free tires on your old 3060 after having to have those orginal tires keep leaking on me. There was a discussion here in the past on that on this topic, just can't find it right now.

I believe I paid about $100 for both front tires. I probably have 70 hours on them now without any issues. Do keep them well greased after each mowing session.

Where did you get the flat free tires? Did you throw your old tires away?

Sigarms · May 16, 2016

No, didn't throw the old tires away.

I got the flat free tires online from "ken jone tires" (still have the shipping box with the old F tires in it).

I have the receipt stored electronically somewhere, just forgot what name I filed it under. If you do a search here and have the time, I believe I mentioned the exact model tire I picked up.

I run on some pretty rough terrain out back on some of the fields, and as mentioned, other than greasing them well after each mowing session, they have held up pretty good (I believe someone else in that same old thread on the topic mentioned they only got about 50 hrs out of theirs before they had issues).

Found it:cool2:

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/...ssue-lost-pin-3.html?highlight=Ken+jones+tire

JOHNTHOMAS · Jul 15, 2017

Up date to foam filled front tire of F deck. ......Tire has finally gone to tire heaven or ****. Fell apart but got a year out of it. Having some bad cutting of grass issues and thinking it may be possible it's caused by the bad front tire. Found my "new" tire from when I bought one a few years ago. I finally noticed the rims of these tires come apart in by removing 4 nuts. The new tire went on the one side of rim and then attached the other side of the rim back on and was ready to install it on my mowing deck but I noticed no fill valve.

Looked at another old cut rim from the past that had a decent tire mounted on it with fill valve. Took it apart with the handy craftsman battery drill/impact and the fill valve was connected to a tube!

So took the damaged side of that rim off and threw it away and attached the other side and tightened the nuts back down. I ordered two gallons of slime which has arrived. I'm going to slime both front tires on my F mowing deck to as full as I can get them and then add air to stated pounds level and go forth. Also same one front blade is now spinning freely and not cutting (Just installed 3 new blades recently and the cut has been as bad as old blades). Have some blue Loctite coming and going to Loctite the blade bolt this time. Also found owners manual for F deck and it has two new cupped washers in the bag!!!!:cool2: I'll add them to the blade that keeps coming loose and see what happens. I don't like doing two or three things different at the same time so not know which "fix" actually did the trick but I'm going to this time.
I've avoided Slime for years to the one front BX tire that goes down and always tubed them but I've now slimed both drive wheels on my F since they both started (a year apart) leaking down and I couldn't find the air leak. Both are staying aired up now.

Tony H · Jul 18, 2017

I would have thought the Ride would have been too hard. I figured the machine would hit hard on the terrain and you would need a Kidney belt. I just put Tubes in my weepy tires

hawkeye08 · Jul 18, 2017

My BIL says they slime all their bikes, ATVs, etc due to "goatheads" which are plentiful where they live. We have not had the problems here but likely someday I will join the slimed crowd.