Burn My Time
~Josh Houghtelin
Great Stuff does not work in Lawn Mower tires.
If you don’t already know I live in a forest of honey locust trees. There is nothing short of having my tires solid filled that will prevent them from being completely raped by the damn locust trees. I had the brilliant idea of trying to fill my tires with ‘great stuff‘. You know, that beautiful can of polyurethane foam you generally use around the house to fill gaps and cracks. I thought that if I drilled a few holes in my lawn mower tires and sprayed a few cans of that stuff in there that it would be the perfect end-all replacement for air. My thoughts were wrong. I had two major problems with my theory.
Problem 1: Great stuff cannot fully cure inside a rubber tire. It needs access to a good amount of air to cure. To overcome this issue I sprayed some in my tire and rolled the tire around for a while and even went so far as to put the tire back on the lawn mower and drive around for a while. My idea was to squish the air in and out so the Great Stuff could cure. No such luck. I still had a lot of Liquidy Great stuff floating around in the tire. You simply can’t correctly cure Great Stuff in a closed space like that. Only the stuff that gushes out the holes you were spraying in will correctly and completely cure.
Problem 2: After struggling to get all the Great Stuff I sprayed in the tire to cure I found out very quickly that no matter how dense you think that stuff is, it will compact. It simply isn’t strong enough or dense enough to prevent the tire from colapsing. Bottom line. Great Stuff does not work as a substitute for air in lawn mower tires.
I know some of you are rolling your eyes and shaking your heads but I had to try. It looks like I will be shipping my tires off to have them professionally solid filled. Anyone have any other brilliant ideas? Keep in mind “Fix-A-Flat” and “Slime” does not work as the locust tree thorns demolish tires with many large holes. Running over even the smallest locus tree thorns will poke multiple holes in any tire.
I leave you with one of the locust trees in our front yard.
8 comments
I’m glad you tried. The day you quit trying will be a sad day. “Trying” and the willingness to face failure head on are the beginnings of ingenuity. Don’t ever let that go.
If I had a lawn mower or the desire to ride it and was in your unique predicament, I would have tried too.
-Kiyu
Posted by Kiyu Gabriel, on September 21st, 2007, às 12:17 am. #.
What about a bunch of industrial epoxy? The kind you can get in like five gallon buckets.
Cheers Kiyu!
Andy, Industrial epoxy! That’s spot on! I really need to get some lawn mowed today so I’m going to have the lawn mower shop put new innertubes in just for today but when they pop next (which will be today)… Epoxy, Here I come.
Posted by Josh Houghtelin, on September 22nd, 2007, às 9:43 am. #.
Can you even walk around your yard bare foot?! and are the horses going to get the pods to snack on?
Posted by jackie, on September 24th, 2007, às 1:19 am. #.
Walking around our yard barefoot is dangerous. Walking around our yard with shoes on is still possibly hazardous to your health when it comes to stepping on honey locust thorns.
Yes, the horses will most likely love the pods. Deer eat them all the time.
P.S. The horses are making the 600+ miles trek to our house TODAY! Yes!
Posted by Josh Houghtelin, on September 24th, 2007, às 7:00 am. #.
You know come to think of it you could save yourself a bunch of Epoxy and probably make it fill better if you soak newspaper strips in the epoxy like you are making epoxy paper mache and then lay the epoxy soaked strips of paper into the tires. Remember some epoxy you need to wear a respirator with when you use it an never use any epoxy without at least protective heavy duty rubber gloves.
I have to admit, I was going to try the same thing. It’s a bummer it didn’t work. I guess I will just have to deal with flat tires all the time. I’m not paying the rip off price to have them foam filled.
If the tire has a tube inside you might be able to use Mr. Tuffy which is what I used to use on my bike tires. It’s a tire liner that protects the inner tube from punctures. Never had a flat after installing those.
http://www.bikepro.com/products/tubes/tubes-tuffy.html
Posted by AF, on May 23rd, 2008, às 2:37 pm. #.
