So, I got the new white wall tyres. I went for 150mm rear tyre because it fits the original rim. According to more knowledgeable sources the shovel head bikes were manufactured and shipped with the same rim holding tyres form 130mm to 150mm.
While the front wheel looks good, the rear wheel spokes are rusty and it makes sense to change them. And since I'm such a fancy pants I went for stainless steel instead of chromium plated. See the pic, fancy.
Pretty hands are not mine. And totally unrelated, but I can't use expression "chromium plated" without thinking Judas Priest song Painkiller, you know "Chromium plated boiling metal / brighter than a thousand suns".
Aaaanyway, the point of the story for today is that taking the old tyre off was more work than anticipated. The rubber had lost most of its elasticity and in all possible ways it was totally cemented in it's place.
We started by trying to use a press to get the tyre to loosen from it's place and to slide to the valley in the rim's profile ( I really am missing terms here - and I'm not in the pic).
It took while for us to get this working. The piston head itself had too small a surface area but after taking the pic we added a piece of square tube there and it helped. But at some point, we did try other means of brute force. Like this,
and this
before we ended up actually sawing open the damn thing.
Did it take more time than driving to nearest wheel shop and get it done there? Hells yeah it did. And to add to that, one of the dudes in the pics has tyre machine at his work. So there would have been proper machinery available, yet it somehow made more sense to do things the hard way.
But it's gone and all that is left is big damn layer of rust. Next step is getting the old spokes out and trying to sand the rust off.
While the front wheel looks good, the rear wheel spokes are rusty and it makes sense to change them. And since I'm such a fancy pants I went for stainless steel instead of chromium plated. See the pic, fancy.
Pretty hands are not mine. And totally unrelated, but I can't use expression "chromium plated" without thinking Judas Priest song Painkiller, you know "Chromium plated boiling metal / brighter than a thousand suns".
Aaaanyway, the point of the story for today is that taking the old tyre off was more work than anticipated. The rubber had lost most of its elasticity and in all possible ways it was totally cemented in it's place.
We started by trying to use a press to get the tyre to loosen from it's place and to slide to the valley in the rim's profile ( I really am missing terms here - and I'm not in the pic).
It took while for us to get this working. The piston head itself had too small a surface area but after taking the pic we added a piece of square tube there and it helped. But at some point, we did try other means of brute force. Like this,
before we ended up actually sawing open the damn thing.
Did it take more time than driving to nearest wheel shop and get it done there? Hells yeah it did. And to add to that, one of the dudes in the pics has tyre machine at his work. So there would have been proper machinery available, yet it somehow made more sense to do things the hard way.
But it's gone and all that is left is big damn layer of rust. Next step is getting the old spokes out and trying to sand the rust off.
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