With this, being the warmest day of the year so far (temperature at 78.5 degrees currently), I thought I’d go outside and survey the damage that winter typically imparts at least a little of, to our yard equipment and tools. Sure enough, our wheelbarrow picked up a flat tire in the harsh weather, and the cotter pin that keeps the wheel from sliding off the hub, had rusted fast. So I had to twist, pull, bang. and pray it out, rendering it irreversibly damaged and thus useless. Of course!
In a pinch, I might have replaced this pin with a galvanized nail. But no pinches today because we’re lucky to have a few lawn equipment facilities so close by, and when the weather cooperates, I can walk to and from all of them, and I was sure that the place I planed to visit would have the correct pins for this application.
Weather like this, on the heels of that blustery, snowy, cold stuff we’ve endured for the past three months, puts me in a spectacular mood. I’m in one of those at the moment in fact. So this little problem bothered me not. In fact, I wish I took everything in a good a stride as I did this incident. So with the sun beaming, I pulled the wheel off the rusty hub, and then took it to the farm equipment store that’s a block or two from here. Did they have either a new inner tube, or entire wheel replacement? Actually, they offered the exact replacement inner tube as well as the cotter pins. So in addition to the new tube, I purchased two pins for good measure, just in case I was to break one during installation.
Then I walked back home (about a five minute hike, along busy and at times, civilized roads, mind you), carrying the old tire and the new parts; dirtying my gray sweatshirt all the while. I know, today’s too hot for a sweatshirt. But I hadn’t counted on it getting as warm as it did. Oh well. It’ll all come out in the wash.
Within two minutes, I had removed the old inner tube, which sported a small yet gaping and jagged hole from where the valve stem had torn free; probably when it was very cold and the rubber had, as a result, become too brittle to support the air pressure inside. Inner tubes do this after so many years anyway, due to the advanced deterioration of the aging rubber. No way I know of to repair these. But since the new tube was only $8, who cares? In fact, for these smaller tires (like what’s found on this wheelbarrow and the mowers and lawn tractors we own), I typically don’t bother with patching. If the tube is more than several years old, I just replace it, because I don’t trust myself to apply a decent patch 
. I also wish to avoid having to repeat the repair on the same tire too soon, as the rubber from which the inner tube is made degrades further.
Anyway, once I’d removed the old inner tube, I set to work on seating the new one inside the tire. At first, I thought to completely separate the tire from the rim. That would make getting the tube around the inside of the rim, as well as avoiding pinches and kinks, very easy. But then I remembered how hard a time I had getting the tires on the lawn tractor back around their rims a few years ago, when I had employed a similar strategy on them. So I thought better of doing that.
Instead, with just my fingers, I worked the new inner tube in through the little space between the now-soft tire and the rim’s edge, being careful to correctly align its valve stem with the matching air hole in the rim. This took around five to ten minutes, as I did not want to rush the job and risk damaging the new tube.
Yes, the purists here will likely admonish me for taking this short cut. They’ll say that I should have completely removed the tire from the rim, to inspect its inside edges for rough spots and sharp edges. If not removed, these might puncture the new tube, and as a general rule, they’re correct to have this concern.
However, I knew the cause of this particular flat; the rubber around the valve stem had degraded. That’s all it was, and if not for that, I’m confident that the tire would not have gone limp. Besides, it held its air for five years I believe, requiring only small, yearly air spurts to top it off to the correct pressure. Besides, further inspection of the old tube revealed no scratches or other holes, though I’d expect that one or more of the above would have been visible if the rim sported any burrs or sharp corners. But since I saw no other damage on the old tube besides the valve stem, I deemed it a low risk approach to skip the exhaustive rim inspection, and to just go ahead and install the new inner tube, without removing the tire and then performing a visual inspection of the rim’s innards first.
Once installed, the new tube quickly inflated, and did not leak. I then attached the repaired wheel back onto the wheelbarrow with the new cotter pin. So far, so good. We’ll see though, how the new tire holds up once we start hauling some heavy loads of river rocks, dirt, shale, and yard rubbish around in it. Stay tuned.
Tom Hesley
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