He Fills Tractor Tires With Concrete

He fills tractor tires with concrete TIRES/WHEELS Miscellaneous 15-2-7 "They ride rough but I never get flats," says Wyatt Kilgallin, Minerva, Ohio, who eliminated problems with punctures on his Farmall H by filling the front tires with concrete. Kilgallin says he has a lot of Multi flora rose and other thorny plants on his farm. The tires on his "H" were getting older. He first looked into filling the tires with a commercial poly-type fill, but at an estimated cost of $150 a tire, decided he had to find another method. "I cut a 4-in. dia. hole in the sidewall of the tire with a hole saw, laid the tire on a flat surface, and poured in soupy, fine aggregate concrete. I used the smallest gravel I could find so it would be easier to feed concrete in through the hole and added extra water so it would level out inside. "It dried enough to use in 3 days and was completely set in 30 days. I nailed the round piece I cut out of the sidewall back in place once concrete began to set. "One benefit is that each concrete-filled tire weighs about 200 lbs. The extra weight helps, especially when bush-hogging, and eliminates the need for front weights. Another benefit of the concrete is that it reinforced the wheels, which were in bad shape. One drawback is that it rides very rough - you really feel i when you hit something. But for low-speed operations there's no problem. "I think the idea would also work well on rear tractor tires. I've calculated that the weight of a rear tire would be about 1,500 lbs. But I haven't had problems with flats on the rear like I have on the front," says Kilgallin. He expects the rubber to eventually wear away from the concrete, or for the concrete to start to crumble, but so far he has noticed no deterioration. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Wyatt Kilgallin, 13990 Liberty Church Road, Minerva, Ohio 44657 (ph 216 868-5319).

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