Yeah, lol... I doubt any of those things applies to your Elek-Trak... Unless you really had some aspirations, I mean.
Now, as far as changing a tire goes, it's very simple, but I'll warn you to either weld bolts to those holes and use nuts to hold the wheels on, or at least put a single pin somewhere. It's a pain to line up bolt-centered wheels, cuz you have to hold them up while you try to insert the first bolt, and there's no hub for them to rest on.
Turns out I am NOT using those hub adapters. They would have still needed modification to use anyways.
The one set of rims was the right size, except that it was for a 3/4 drive shaft instead of a 1".
My friend Rich has a BIG lathe, that he can chuck an entire wheel in. I bought one foot of steel tube with a 1" INTERIOR diameter and gave it to Rich. He put the rims in the lathe and ran a whole saw through to cut out the original 3/4 pipe.
Turns out the whole saw was the EXACT SAME diameter as the outside of the 1" ID pipe! He just slid a 6 inch chunk of pipe into each rim and welded it in! (OK - he actually drilled the cross-pin hole first, and threw a coat of white paint on afterwards as well! Thanks Rich!)
I went to the auto parts store and bought a "four-in-one" air valve tool. It's for cleaning up threads on valves, but since it can screw onto the threads, it gave me something to hang on to to pull the new valve stem through the rim. It worked great, and was well worth the $2.09 I spent on it!
After that, it was a bit of wrestling to get the new tires on the rims. I had never done that before, but lubricating the tire and rim with soapy water seemed to help. Then, a bit of air from the compressor, and POOF! New ElecTrak wheels!
I did some more work polishing up the drive axles on the transmission. I also reamed out the inside of the rims with my 1" spade drill bit. Then I lubricated/protected the axles with some anti-seize metal grease, and slid on the new wheels.
The old rim was used as a stand. Almost 40 years old, and they are still making the same tread pattern!
I hope to be the guy who pulls these rims off to replace the tires 30 to 40 years from now!
That tread pattern - they keep making it because it works!
Personally, I can't stand using those kind of tires, but then again, I'm always trying to pull stuff that's heavier than the tractor, too. I prefer either bog tires (knobbies) or ATV off-road service tires. Of course, I don't really care about my grass, either. I drag cars and junk across it all the time, and drive my truck into/out of my yard like it's a driveway!
Still, very cool that you're even spending this kind of time and learning about it, rather than either having someone else do it for you, or just giving up on it altogether.
It'd be great if alot more people would spend more time learning new things...
Tonight, I got the transmission reinstalled on the ElecTrak.
It was quite a trick to hold up the back of the tractor, slide the transmission in place, rotate it up, get the stick shift through...etc, etc.
Then bolt all that in place.
After all that, I found out I have a leak! gear lube was leaking out around the one drive axle! I assume there is a seal in there that went bad! Well, for now, I will just park it on some cardboard...
With three batteries under the back seat, and the drive belt back on, I was able to test drive the tractor. Yea! It works!
Today
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