Well this week I've got a couple sets of wheels that were off of buggies that were
bought at auctions. And I got to thinking, you know I've never gone through a video as to
what to look for when you see a buggy. What do I look for in the wheels?
Well this is kind of what this week's going to be about. I'm going to go through
the diagnostic process that I go through when I have a set of wheels brought into me.
When an individual comes across a buggy that's for sale, either through an auction or
private treaty, one of the first things to consider is the condition of the wheels, because if there is
something that needs to be fixed that's usually the expensive part that most people don't do themselves.
So one of the first things I do is I look for sound, or actually listen for sound, on
a buggy wheel or a wagon wheel. If it's possible to take the wheel off and drop it on a solid piece of
concrete, you can hear whether it has a tight solid ring to it, or a flat dead thud, or even a rattle.
When you have rubber tires, like this first set of wheels, it's a little more difficult to hear that,
but when you become accustomed to what a solid wheel should sound like it's pretty easy to pick it out.
Sometimes even taking a hammer and tapping around the rim, especially if it is a steel tire,
you can hear whether that tire is tight or not. And sometimes you can even see whether or not dust,
or rust dust, comes out from under the tire. The next best thing to do is to do a visual inspection.
Here I look for spaces between the spokes and the felloes,
between the gaps where the joint is, where the two felloes come together. If there are
gaps that are starting to show up there, it's an indication that the tires are loose.
Sometimes you can actually even see air spaces between the tire and the outside rim of the felloes
When you're doing the visual inspection, when you look at the joints, where the two felloe
halves come together, if that joint is relatively tight, and you still see spaces where the spokes
come into the fellies, this is where you have a wheel that is called rim bound, or felloe bound.
The felloes, actually in circumference, are too long
and they don't allow the felloes to come down and shoulder onto the spokes themselves.
In a case like this you can have a tire that can be relatively snug onto the felloe, but that
tightness is not being transferred back to the hub, so you actually still have a very loose hub.
And when this wheel is driven, a lot of movement can be created where the spokes go into the hub
and actually damage the spokes. Also in the process of this examination you might run across pieces,
or places where the wood is actually physically broken. In cases such as this, you automatically
know that the tires and the wheels are going to have to be disassembled to have this wood replaced.
Also when you run across wheels that have been set out in the weather for long periods of time, you
have to kind of be aware of warpage, either in the felloes themselves, and oftentimes in the spokes.
When I actually remove this hard rubber tiring then it's a little easier to hear
this loose rattle sound, indicating how loose these wheels really are.
And oftentimes when a customer will bring in a set of wheels, they'd like to know what all
is involved in the repair process. Well some of that never really shows up until you get the
wheels completely torn apart. So in the process, this also reveals what else might be hiding.
So when I get an old set of wheels in, one of the first things I look for is how much dish is
in these wheels. If these wheels, like these are, are fairly flat, or very small amount of dish,
that's actually kind of a good thing. It's easier to add dish to a wheel than it is to take it out.
So it looks like on this set of wheels we have one felloe half that is broken and one felloe
half that is warped. So we're going to replace two felloe halves in these two rear wheels
and we have one spoke that was cracked clear through. We're going to replace that one also.
The channel we can clean up, all this rust, and reset it. This is a fairly decent rubber tire. We can set
it back on and these wheels should be good to use again.
So the second set of wheels I'm guessing is
maybe off a pony sized dray wagon, or hitch wagon, from the difference in the size the diameters.
So we're going to go through and do the same type of process. We'll listen to how they sound, they're
really pretty loose, do a physical inspection and see what might show up in these also.
So the first set of buggy wheels had been rebuilt somewhere in its lifetime.
These were all replacement spokes and felloes, but this second set of wheels is all original.
They have been sitting out for quite a while. Also and these tire bolts are so
rusted in that it's going to take a little heat to get them knocked loose.
So the biggest repair in this wheel is going to be a half felloe section. where
they have collapsed where the spokes are. In the process, when that happened, they also
took the tenons out of the spokes. So we're gonna have to replace a couple spokes also.
So for this light set of pony dray wheels, I have a felloe section to put in,
a couple spokes, and these should tighten up pretty well. They do have some age on them,
nothing that a good coat of linseed oil won't help once I get these tires reset.
When you want to add the linseed is after the tires are set.
So that preserves the tightness that I put into them when I set tires.
So this is the inspection process that I go through.
I listen to how they sound, I look for spaces in the joints, and then
finally dismantle them and look for defects and breakage in the wood themselves.
Hope this makes sense and might help you out when you buy that next buggy,
Once again, thanks for watching!