Saturday 5 January 2019

Tyre troubles

For a while now I have had a slow leak on one of my wheels. Over Christmas things got a whole lot worse so I took the wheel into a local tyre service centre.
When they removed the wheel we discovered the tyre has a leak from the patch repaired in Antigue (see this post)

Unfortunately there was also an internal split (see above photo) which stopped the tyre shop from repairing the wheel leaving me with a one wheeled Genny for Christmas. They refused on safety grounds which is understandable

I hunted all the local tyre shops but they had nothing suitable directing me to motorbike shops. They were all closed so I wasted a whole day looking for a new tyre. In the end I got a bike tyre repair kit and made the repair myself - see above

I found replacement tyres on ebay at a great price so ordered a set that arrived yesterday. I fitted the new tyres to the rims and today will inflate at a garage and pray all works


I removed the old tyres using a few spanner handles as tyre levers. The new tyres are exactly the same tread and design but made by a different company. The size is 80/80-14 which is width (mm), height (mm as a % of tyre width) and rim diameter in inches. I later considered looking for slightly wider tyres which I think would protect the rims better as they are easily damaged. When refitting the wheels/tyres I will check if there is room for a wider tyre. Wider tyres are available but will not fit within the tight Segway mudguards
.
I also made a fibreglass repair to the Genny mudguard that got busted a while back

I'm aware this is turning into a "how to maintain your wheelchair" blog, but things will change soon as I am off to Antigua again next month for some sunshine

No comments:

Post a Comment