Warbird Information Exchange

Stumbled upon some pics of what there is of her. As I've read, one of her 'trademarks' on the ground at least, was her large main tires/wheels. The tires & wheels on a pic or two look small, they look small on the struts. Is it just because the tires are flat or has it been fitted with smaller wheels &/or tires?

What??

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Kind Regards,
Gary Lewis
J.A.F.O.

Well, depending on which tire you look at ( ) on our Mauler, neither one is really all that huge. Of course, that certainly depends on what you consider to be a big tire. Big, as compared to my little air racer? Yes. Big as compared to a B-36, not really.






Gary

That split rim is interesting. I've never seen anything like that on an aircraft wheel.

I assume 'big' as compared to an A-1s or F4Us or P-47s. I've got a plastic model of an AM-1 & the tires are bigger than similar kits in that scale. In the pic or 2, there just seems to be a lot of space between the tire & the the upper portion of the lower strut. Thanks for the close-up pics!

Pretty much all airliner wheels are split rim to make tire mount/dismount practical, I'd pay to watch some redneck wrestle with the mains from a 747 if they weren't split. Thats because of the huge forces applied to an aircraft tire. What other type of tire/wheel can go from zero to 160 MPH in one rotation while supporting 800,000 lbs of load so wheel flanges are very tall making 'over the bead' impossible-next time you are near an airliner type at an airshow, look around the inner flange area of the wheel

Gary, I got a giggle out of reading 'for farm use only' on one of the sidewalls, does this define the airplanes role as a 'mud mover'?

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Even with a split rim, breaking the bead on some of these tires can still be a b*tch. Gary, any good tips for us in Dallas on how to break the bead on a C-47/R4D/DC-3 wheel? We've tried multpile courses of action up to and including stuffing as many "big guys" on the tire as possible and jumping up and down like a bunch of 10-year-olds, but nothing seems to work reliably (or at least to a degree where we don't feel like we're risking hurting the wheel).

And none of you say "get a wheel mount-dismount machine". CWAM has one and it doesn't fit that big wheel (for that fact it doesn't fit the L-39 and L-29 wheels very well either...) and we don't have the money for one.

Another problem with the bigger a/c tires is the thickness of the tire itself. We had a bunch of 16" 16 ply tires left in a hangar here. Lots of folks were interested in them for truck, trailer or tractor tires, 'cause 'they'll never wear out', much less 'run flat' on a light vehicle After they found out how thick the sidewalls were & realizing they'd only install on a split rim, no one wanted them.

Well, so much for my suggestion then. We have one here in Midland that works great on the B-29/B-24 wheels. If y'all want, you can bring your wheels here and use our machine. Other than that, I'm not going to be much help.

Gary

I used to get T-6 tires mounted at a truck tire shop, take it somewhere that does construction equipment tires.

Well... that Mauler tire is a 34x9.9, which isn't all that much bigger than the 32x8 used on corsairs. Perhaps the model kits aren't that accurate?

Cheers,
Richard

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Richard Mallory Allnutt - Photography - http://www.rmallnutt.com

That's how we break the bead on our B-17 tires! I even have a photo of four of us doin' the "tire bounce":





How 'bout using a forklift with the tines spread way apart? We've done that, too.

Cheers!

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Dean Hemphill, K5DH
Port Charlotte, Florida

Well.... we've done that (and used it to push a 2x4 into it while leaned up against a wall) and it usually works, but I think the general consensus is that most don't feel it's necessarily a "safe" method.

Gary, I'm sure Robert would love to use the tire machine in Midland, but the problem is that when we usually need to pull a tire off is when the R4D is down for winter maintenance so there's no good way (other than driving) to get the tire out there and it'd probably be cheaper to pay to use one at a construction company or semi place, which we're trying to avoid if we can as that's not particularly inexpensive either if they can figure out what they're looking at...

Anyway, I guess it's the universal "big boy hop" for the next one.

CAP: Levers and fulcrums are your friends.....take a look at the Horrible Fright manual bead breaker and build your own. Scale things up as necessary and add a screw down adapter to hold the wheel down as you lever the bead down. Not high tech, but with a little welding and proper scaling and geometry, you could have someone that is under 100# be able to do the beads. Design it right and it could also be a knockdown unit that would transport easily.

Thanks, that's given me a few ideas. It's probably way above my head as far as welding it goes (but I've got a Grandfather who's good with a welder and several guys at the hangar too) I think I might be able to put together something with some 1-inch square and 1/2" Angle.