old hay wagon

[Jeff in Oh]

I bought an old hay wagon the other day. It has a wooden running gear, axles and all,steel spoked wire wheels with rubber tires.It's in pretty good shape,the guy we got it off of said he used it as a backup wagon and had 100 bales on it with no problem.My question is what is involved in tightening up the axles, They're a little sloppy, The front worse than the back.I just wanted to know what I might need before I decide to get greasy and do the job to find out.It drives me nuts to start a job and not have the stuff at hand to get it done. Are there leather seals or wood bushings in there that might need replaced?, just thought I'd ask,thanks Jeff.

 

[johns48jdb]

probably no way to tell until you just dive in. i'd be cautious about putting that much weight on an old wagon. maybe just a few at a time until your comfortable with loading it. i don't like using wagons to haul hay on to start with. to hard to back especailly if loaded. regular trailers are a whole lot easier to handle. the secret to saving hay if you have a lot to haul in one day is to have enough trailers sitting around to load all your hay on them. you can park them any where and get your hay out of the rain or, if its real hot, wait until after dark and unload them.

 

[Leroy]

It sounds like you have old car front axles under it and that the wood axles were cut off at the ends where the skeins for the orignal wheels either wood or steel were on. The next stel is to try to identify the make of car the axlescame out of as to figure out how to tighten things up and if the wood axle to steel axle connection is loose and there are many ways they were fastened on or if it is the wheel bearings are just loose. Do the wheels have a 5 lug wheel (Ford), or 6 lug wheel (Chevr and some Chrysler) (Some chrysler also used a 5 lug wheel) or it could be from many of the other makes of the 20's-30's and even have a 7 lug wheel. Some of the axles hsed a standard taper roller bearing while some used a ball bearing and some used a standard type grease seal while others nid not have a grease seal of any kind in. Some axles were a tube design while others were an I beam design and if the grease caps are on the hubs they may just have a name on them. I need all this type of information to guide you thru repair. And those wagond trail perfect at any speeds. Here in Ohio if you bought a trailer licence for it you could take it down the interstates at the 65 limit. The car axles we have loaded up to 175 bale on and small grain I have had 150 bushels on and that is 4 1/2 ton of grain. I have several wagons like that around here. Forget what part of state you have sain you were from. I am from Wapakoneta. Any questions with some pictures I might just be able to answer them.

 

[Jeff in Oh]

Thanks for the info guys. It is not a car axle, it has no lugs at all, just a hub with grease fittings in and out. It has what appears to be a grease cap with a square nut shape on the end. The axle appears to taper down and go into the rear of the hub.

 

[Leroy]

I assumed that it was converted and that the conversion axles were what you were refering to as being loose as in the conversion they were never fastened correctly and that is what gives these wagons a bad name. What you have is the orignal wheels that have had the steel rins cut off and rims for rubber tires welded on. That tipe of wheel setup is refered to as a skein hub and wheel and was orignally designed for horse use so very slow speeds. The square nut was mostly left uncovered as for greasing you always had the take that nut off and slide the wheel out a bit and took a wood paddle and diped it into a bucket of very heavy long fibered special grease that held itself together (Modern grease will not do that and just push out right away), The grease fittings were an added after item. The way they work is the taper of the skein (the steel part on the axle) causes the wheel under load to slide toward the inner end of the skein and that is what tigens the hub and wheel for the wab when in operation and takes the wear off the nut. The nuts on the left side are a left hand thread and at times if they are not properly tightened when backing up they will turn loose and drop off. There was a special wrench that came with the wagon when new for those nuts and it was also used as the pin to hold the double tree to the toung for the horses to keep it from getting lost. I have seen people put a homemade washer in back of the nut to try to tighten things up, does not work very well tho. The play comes from wear on both the skein and inside of the wheel hub and usualy is from the farmer negelicting to do the daily grease job during use and the wagons that were converted are the worse as instead of being pulled at the 2MPH a hores walkes with a maximum of 20 mile a day when the farmer went to town with it they were pulled with a tractor or car at faster speeds for more miles in a day. I have seen several that the bottom sides of the skein was wore completly away and the wood also inside the skein wore down a half inch. Most were rated at about 2 ton but would haul 5 ton as easy as the 953 John Deere tractor wagon that was rated at 4 ton and now people load them down with a hundred seventy five bushels or up of grain that weigs 5 1/4 tom plus the bed of a 1/2 ton or 1/2 again their rated capacity. If the wood is not rotted it should handle 150 bale of hay easy. I put 150 bushels of grain on my Ford auto axle converted wagon. For grease if you can find it get the old style fibbered wheel bearing grease and use a 1/4 pound or 1/4 of the box everytime you grease the wheels per wheel and it will last 5 times as long as if you squirt it with a grease gun but if you can't do that then squirt it with at least 10 pumps (per Wheel) of the grease gun every 10 mile. Are the bolsters set at the same height, if they are then it is one of the wagons that came with the same wheel all around, if the back boulster is lower it is a wagon that had bigger wheel on the back. 28" on front and 32" on back being commom with the steel wheels.

 

[Leroy]

You also said wire spooked that ment auto wheel to me, the others were not refered to as wire as the spokes are about a half inch in diameter.

 

[Leroy]

Couldn't think as fas as should. Those wheels are refered to as spoke wheels, not wire wheels.