So I have been absent for a few days fellas. I have tried to stay caught up. But I had plenty of projects to keep me busy lately. Besides work. LOL. First?
Lets talk tires. When I built the Pitts, I used the very "USED" original design White Rose wheels on it. You all may remember. The wheels looked good, but them tires. YUK! The wheels are just so pretty to let them remain that way.
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Plus, I decided to put a more appropriate size wheel on the Pitts. What ever shall I do with them gorgeous wheels then? Oh well, I know a baby Yak that needs some wheels. Here is what I did. I tinkered around one evening and removed the original tire using a couple of screw drivers like we used to use tires spoons to remove an old car tire from a wheel. What do you know? They are Dubro tires. With the centers cut out.
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Dang those things have seen some pavement landings huh? After they were removed, I cleaned up the wheels and set them aside. My search for the coveted Dubro 450TL payed off.
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So now all I have to do is figure out how to cut the centers out of the new tires. And I discovered this was almost so easy, my Pop-Top could have done it. I used my hobby knife to "etch" or "scribe"...which ever works best here, a line around the center of what needed to be removed. Then cutting to full blade depth I went around the circumference in a complete circle. By doing both sides of the tire the same way, I discovered that my blade went "almost" all the way through. But I wanted to make sure I had a clean cut, so I used my hand held saber saw to complete the incision all the way around. Once this was done, I lifted out the center of the tire and wa-laa. Looked almost as good as the factory. Funny thing here is that the Airman Wheels use the same exact tires on all of their wheels. White Rose has recently updated their tire line to a different design. Anyway, you can see my progress with the photos of the surgery I was doing on the tires. Of course I had to remove the new tires from the original wheels. Same procedure as removing the tires from the White Rose wheels.
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Ok, now with the tire centers cut out, it was time to re-install the newly cut tires to the White Rose wheels. My first attempts before I even cut the 4.5" Dubros was with a 5" that I had removed from my broken Yak wheel. You all remember that right? Ugh. Anyway, I used the same method to install as I did to remove the tires. Two screw drivers like the tire spoons. It worked ok, but doing so has a tendency to "tear" the foam tire. I didn't want to do this to the new tires, so I opted to "MUSCLE" them on. A little difficult, but no tears. Once they were on, a little side wall pushing and the beads sat right down where they needed to be.
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This is what the original Dubro wheel looks like. And the new Dubro with the center cut out.
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And this is the finished product. Brand new tires on my original design White Rose wheels. All washed and shined up and ready for install on the new SD Baby Yak-ster.
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From now on, no more purchasing $150.00 worth of new wheels. I will simply order up a set of what ever size tire I want and change them out myself. Much more cost effective. And to that? It opens the door for all those worn out tires on all those snazzy looking wheels.
. I used DuBro 4-40 ball-links on the arms and kit supplied ball links for the horns. The kit supplied have the correct spacers built in to the ball for the double horn arrangement.
