Recipe for Frustration

1. Have flat wheelbarrow wheel.
2. Buy solid, never-go-flat replacement wheel.
3. Unscrew bolts holding on flat wheel.
4. Wrench flat wheel off axle with difficulty.
5. Be unable to remove rotatory cuff for old wheel that has fused to axle, and thus be unable to replace old wheel with new wheel, which has its own rotatory cuff.
6. Just when the trees finally decide to shed their leaves.
7. Be unable to find a suitable replacement axle anywhere online.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2011 at 9:37 PM and is filed under Austin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Recipe for Frustration”

  1. James Reasoner says:
    December 20, 2011 at 10:17 PM

    My chemistry teacher daughter says you should soak the axle in lemon juice, which might dissolve that rust and loosen the hub that’s stuck on there.

  2. James Reasoner says:
    December 20, 2011 at 10:34 PM

    Also, if you have access to a vise you might clamp the hub in it and hit the end of the axle a few times with a hammer.

  3. Lawrence Person says:
    December 20, 2011 at 11:20 PM

    I will probably try the lemon juice om the axle after I get it out of the dishwasher. I tucked it in there with the dishes following the well-known scientific principle of “why the hell not?”

  4. Jock says:
    November 7, 2012 at 8:44 PM

    I’m confused. I went to the website of Marathon Industries, Kent, Washington, http://www.marathonind.com/, and see that they sell solid (aka “flat-free”) tires and pneumatic tires.

    I need four wide tires for a “horizontal design” compost bin that’s a 60-gallon drum that one must spin or turn several times a week.

    Most such designs use inexpensive “fixed casters” but a friend has one that uses the much larger wheelbarrow tires, which makes all the difference in the world when the drum is filled with 150 pounds of compost:

    a. the barrel turns easier
    b. the barrel has more support from the big wheels versus the little casters and therefore does not “warp itself” or “come out of center.”

    Do you recommend for or against Marathon products?

    What is that Marathon tire you’ve got a picture of?

    Thanks.

  5. Lawrence Person says:
    November 7, 2012 at 8:56 PM

    If you can get the axle off, solid tires will probably work for you, but they’re quite expensive: Mine was in the $25-30 range, so if you need four it might be cheaper to buy a new bin.

    I haven’t used mine heavily, but it has held up quite well, and I don’t ever need to deal with the aggravation of fixing a flat on it ever again.

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