Why not sugar water in tires instead of beet juice?

   / Why not sugar water in tires instead of beet juice? #112  
I hear you on environmental concerns, but it's probably not a problem.

People don't use regular old green poisonous ethylene glycol radiator antifreeze to mix with water for loading tires. It does look like Gatorade and it has a sweet attractive tasted.....But if it leaks, it kills growing things. Plus any animal that drinks it will die - although not easily. Kids are at risk.

RV antifreeze - the pink fluid stuff you put in pipes for winter storage - is what people use to mix with water for loading tires. It is propylene glycol. It has all the temperature & mixing advantages as the green radiator fluid, costs about the same, sits on the next shelf at the auto parts place, and best of all it is not-poisonous. In fact it is used in food prep.

I don't load tires myself. More trouble than it's worth for what I do.

rScotty
As someone just posted green poisonous antifreeze they put in their tires. This is what I meant. I'm aware of the safe versions but that doesn't reach alot of folks out there whether lack of caring or whatever
 
   / Why not sugar water in tires instead of beet juice? #113  
I have 1550# of Rimguard in my rear tractor tires. Non-corrosive, non-toxic, heavy. Installed on my new tractor thirteen years ago - not a moments problem.
 
   / Why not sugar water in tires instead of beet juice? #114  
Why do you assume that? Does the presence of Sugar inhibit corrosion? Beet juice has some natural corrosion inhibitiors.
In theory, you could use a water soluble and biodegradable Machining cutting fluid concentrate. Maybe a gallon per tire mixed with water. I was considering that and then I realized I already owned a huge steel box I wasn't using.
IF you had read the thread you would realize that the sugar content idea had been thrown out. Beet juice being sold for tractor tire filling is a leftover AFTER they take the sugar out.
 
   / Why not sugar water in tires instead of beet juice? #115  
It seems like sugar water would get expensive.
 
   / Why not sugar water in tires instead of beet juice? #117  
I have seen the ads for beet juice for tires. I have not been able to find pricing. In order to get pricing I must fill out a form with all my info and then I will get a quote. But after speaking to a few folks they spent over 300 bucks per 11.2 x 24 tires. I assume beet juice is used because of all the sugar dissolved into the beet juice. Looking at my Yanmar YM2310 manual it says the tires can be loaded with 235 pounds of a calcium chloride and water solution. Water will dissolve, by weight, pretty much the same amount of sucrose, which is table sugar. Since water weighs about 8 pounds per gallon if I was to make a saturated solution of sugar and water I would need to buy 235 pounds of sugar. Really though, because of the way sugar is packaged in bulk I would need to buy 250 pounds. A quick look online resulted in me finding sugar for 80 cents per pound delivered. So 200 bucks for 250 pounds of sugar. But sugar dissolves 2.4 times, as much, by weight, as calcium chloride into water. So I would need to use more water and less sugar to get to the 235 pound weight shown in the manual. It looks like I can just add sugar water to my innertubes instead of beet juice. Is there a good reason(s) to not use sugar water instead of beet juice? Will it eat up my tubes? I don't get it garage flooring Raleigh. Since the sugar water is way less corrosive than calcium chloride I wonder why I have never seen a sugar water solution being mentioned for adding weight. Anybody here have any info on this?
Thanks,
Eric
I've searched online for information about adding sugar to water instead of salt.
A chemical solution can be easily made weighing up to 13 to 15 lbs per gallon BUT it doesn't stay fluid anywhere near as cold as the Rimguard brand mix.

Is there a way to figure a solution to make one's own beet juice or sugar-based fluid fill and have it usable as FLUID as cold as say minus 20 or 30?

What sat you Redsquare scientists??
 
   / Why not sugar water in tires instead of beet juice? #118  
Why not Bama jelly? Would it be too sweet?
 
   / Why not sugar water in tires instead of beet juice? #119  
It irks me when people make smart-ass derogatory replies. Having spent 40 years as a food processing engineer, I have seen a lot of stainless steel that was badly corroded. From worse to better; 304, 304L, 316, 316L, and 317L, are the common commercial grades available suitable for corrosive conditions. All of them can and do corrode under certain circumstances. Cost becomes a major factor, availability from suppliers becomes a factor. Sometimes you can only use what you can get. The more exotic alloys like Titanium, Hastelloy and Inconel may be appropriate in a lab, but are seldom a practical or cost effective solution for most industrial installations (there are exceptions). Improper sanitation procedures by under-trained sanitation crews is a common and major factor. Perhaps the inexperience of an engineer might be a cause, but usually the stupidity of the engineer is pretty dang low on the list of factors.

Plastic components are often a better corrosion resistant solution, but sometimes you can't use plastic because of strength or temperature considerations.

In regards to the OPs situation; I'd be reluctant to use sugar water. There are to many unknowns. Corrosion may be an issue, especially if the tires are tubeless. If the concentration is high, I can see the sugar coming out of solution at cold temperatures potentially causing issues. It may work but has unknown risks. If you don't want to take the time and expense to go somewhere for beet juice, then windshield washer fluid is the probably the most affordable option that you can do fairly easily by yourself.
engIneers at Hobas pipe told me that they can make a pipe to carry any liquid, at any temp. they had bought the US rights to pipe 40% Hydrochloric Acid, at 185F.
 
   / Why not sugar water in tires instead of beet juice? #120  
I've searched online for information about adding sugar to water instead of salt.
A chemical solution can be easily made weighing up to 13 to 15 lbs per gallon BUT it doesn't stay fluid anywhere near as cold as the Rimguard brand mix.

Is there a way to figure a solution to make one's own beet juice or sugar-based fluid fill and have it usable as FLUID as cold as say minus 20 or 30?

What sat you Redsquare scientists??
You would have to dissolve seven pound of sugar in a gallon of water to get fifteen pounds per gallon. that is a lot. Not sure you could do it at room temperature. Guess I could take a gallon of water, and a ten pound bag of sugar, and put it in a five gallon cooler with my sou vide heater run it over night, and then run it through a filter to remove the sugar crystals and see how much a gallon of the solution weighs. If you had saturated a liquid solution at 50-F, you would have crystals forming at anything lower than 50-F.

But, if the crystals were small, I would expect them to go back in solution as you run the tractor, and agitate the liquid in the tire. And, I don’t think the sugar crystals would ablade the interior of the tire.

But I have a kind of memory, that sugar solutions are corrosive.
 
 
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