powder in tires?

[bweb]

A friend of mine had some tires changed on the back of his tractor recently. They had some kind of powder in them and the tire store wouldn"t change them because they didn"t know what it was. No one else around here knows what it could be. He said they were extremely heavy. Two people could barely move them. Any ideas what it was?

 

[Davis In SC]

Some airport tugs and industrial tractors used tires filled with powdered lead.

 

[MIKE FRENCH]

Have seen several rear tires full of powered lead.I understand why they wouldn't change them, had a nice set of rims that had tires full of this, never got them off, and they are dangerous.

 

[Uncle Ernie]

Was the tractor imported? White powder inside a tire?? Can anybody spell Smuggler??? LOL!!

 

[Anonymous-0]

What you have is almost unheard of any more. It is called Liquid Lead. It came in 3 different weights. 12 lbs. to the gallon. 20 lbs & 30 lbs to the gallon. It will flow very easily. If you splash water on it, the water will bead up and roll around after it is coated with the Lead. Not sure what it's made of and haven't seen one of the Lead pumps for over 30 years. There should be a cap on the tube about 1 inch in diameter with a normal valve stem in the middle. The the Lead was pumped in through the 1 inch opening.

The theory was that a tire with water would have friction from the water staying on the bottom of the tire as it turned. Liqiud Lead was pumped in until it completly filled the tire and was supposed to have less power loss.

The real problem was just as you are describing - no one wants to work with it. We bought a tractor with Lead in the tires in the early 70's. It took all day just to get the Lead out of one of the back tires so it could be repaired. We couldn't find a pump and left the Lead out. We then spent another day cleaning out the other tire. For the next 2 weeks we spent every other day cleanig Lead out of the tires. It would settle to the bottom of the tube when the tractor was stopped at the end of the day and settle to the bottom and cause the tire to be out of balance. When you turned a corner and the tires got out of synce it would almost throw you off the tractor tossing you from side to side. I took 3 years to get the tubes clean. Looking back we should have thrown the tubes away and bought new ones.

 

[Anonymous-0]

How much powder is it? Talcum powder and baby powder has been used so the tube doesn't wear from the tire. At least it is used on off road motorcycle tires. Dave

 

[davejoe]

some semi truck tire guys put a bag of some kind of sandy/powder in the tires when they mount them. It is in a bag about the size of a full sandwich bag. the bag breaks on its own and balances the tire. some of our drivers insist on using it, others insist that we do not. Dave

 

[Anonymous-0]

In the era(late '50's or early 60's) we bought a
machine to fill this powder in tires. The first
thing we had to do was put a larger diameter
valve core on the tube. Then use this gadget to
pump the powder in. The advantages were: The wt.
was twice as much as liquid and it was non
corrosive. This gadget(a tank and a pump using
air pressure) would also draw the powder out of
the tube. The performance of a tractor was really
good. When the company service man came(on Christmas eve day)the poor man had so much trouble. He worked on it most of the day. All of
a sudden he said"I got it" and put the pressure to it. It made a puff and the salesman had powder
behind his glasses and we had powder on our shop
ceiling, still in that building today. We all
missed most of Christmas eve.

 

[Anonymous-0]

When I first read the subject line, I thought for sure we were just talking about cornstarch
which has been used for years to keep the tube from sticking to the inside of the tire. Wow,
was I wrong!! Never, ever heard of powdered
lead being used for tire ballast before. I do
like the sounds of 20-30 lbs. per gallon. If the
tire is completely filled we're talking a whole
lot of weight!!

 

[bweb]

That sounds like it was the lead. He said water would just roll right off of it and the wheel had an extra large hole where the valve stem was. Thanks all.