Foam in tires

I heard of places putting foam in tires so they won't go flat. I also saw where wheelborrows and 2 wheel carts have hard rubber tires, solving the problem of small pneumatic tires going flat, very expensive too. Does someone sell a kit to add foam to small tires?

I never could find one, I tried O"Reilly"s, NAPA, Autozone here locally. A local tire seller here takes the tires and next week you get it back. I have heard it makes for a rough-riding tire.

Any large tire shop should be able to get the foam kits for you. You also might try any mining equipment supply company as it is quite common to foam-fill the tires on large mining equipment.

When I worked for American Borate Company we foam-filled the tires on our underground Wagner Mobile Tele-Trams. One word of Caution: When the tire wears down to where it is no longer serviceable, you cannot just remove the tire & replace it. You have to throw the tire & RIM away and replace the rim, tire, and foam filling. (expensive)!

Doc

not only ride rough but they are great weights,..i had a set of 650-16 on the front of my 3400 Kubota and they probably weighed 80 pounds

We had a skid loader with urethane in the tires. It added about 400 lbs per tire. They put new tubes in the rims before injecting the urethane. After its in there, the only way to replace a tire is to cut it off with a sawzall. Worked good tho.

We just replaced the original tires on our 7810E. They had a layer of soft material called Quikgel similar to what no-flat car tires use. Really worked well without the problems of foam filling.

Heavy, rides like a green-broke bronc - jars your teeth out, makes absolute mess of rim at replacement time, very expensive. Local tire store installs it, neighbor tried it, I don't want it. Tom

All our telehandlers are set up with foam tires as are our wheel loaders.

So I take it there is no DIY kits to foam small personal tires? I tried putting great stuff foam in a plastic ball bat, wouldn't harden, must take air to harden.

Over here we can buy it in farm equipment stores etc. and their webshops. I know that doesn't help you a lot. Quite expensive. I have never used it myself but I have a small 2 ton grain trailer the former owner has foamed one of the tires on. I wish he hadn't. It is not filled enough so the tire is half flat when the trailer is full. Nothing I can do about it except put a new tire on.

you should be able to add air to it. What pressure does it show now?

"Slime" works very well for tires thatget punctured by cactus and thorns. Also very well in lawnmowers and ATV.

Some years ago I had the front tires of my Ford 641D foamed after having lots of flats from Hawthorn thorns. The tires looked like new, but had so many thorns in them that almost immediately after fixing a flat, I would have the same tire go flat again.

If I remember right, the foaming cost somewhat over $100 for the front pair. After being foamed, the wheels/tires weighed about twice what they had, not necessarily a bad thing. The ride with the foamed tires was REALLY rough--very little give at all. But for several years, I had no more tire problems.

Then one of the tires began to separate and come apart in the sidewall. There was no way I could see to stop the separation, and eventually the tire broke loose on one side from the foamed interior. I had to do something with the flopping tire, and ended up cutting it off with my sawzall. But with no tread, the interior foam would not turn the tractor worth beans, so I cut off the "doughnut" of heavy foam. Then I could get the beads off the rim. I bought the heaviest duty tire I could find and filled it with air. About a year later, the other foamed tire also separated and I followed the same sequence in replacing it. Removing the first tire and foam was pretty tough, as I was learning how to do it. The second one was lots easier and quicker.

Not too long after I installed the second new tire, the first one went flat. This time I decided to try using Slime tire sealant. I put in most of a quart in each of the front tires and refilled them with air. I have found that if that tractor is not used for a couple of months, the front tires will lose some air and need to be filled up, but if I use it quite often, I only need air about once or twice a year. It must be pretty close to 10 years ago that I replaced the foamed tires.

I don"t think I will ever have tires foamed again. It is fairly expensive, and I was disappointed in the life of the tires after I foamed them. Maybe they were low quality tires, but they just did not last that long after I invested the money to foam them. I had expected much longer service life. Also the foamed tires would "give" very little, which made the ride terrible and which probably was harder on the rest of the tractor than air filled tires.

Some people do not like Slime, but it has worked well for me in a number of tires used on slow speed service, like my riding lawn mowers, the tractors and even a car hauling trailer. I would not try Slime in any tire that will ever be used at high speed where balance is a concern, since I don"t know how a person could balance a tire with Slime.

I would expect that the cost of foaming front tractor tires would be much more than I paid 20 something years ago, since everything else has gone up so much. It would not surprise me if foaming the tires on the same tractor would now cost $200, or maybe even more.

Using foamed tires might work great for some people or in some applications. But I was very disappointed in how well it worked for my tractor front tires, and did not think it was cost effective. Slime is lots less expensive and has worked much better for me than foaming tires. Good luck!

(quoted from post at 15:39:26 10/01/13) you should be able to add air to it. What pressure does it show now?

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The only gauge I have is the one on the gun. It shows the compressor pressure 6 bar = 87 psi so I just assume the valve is blocked. I thought the foam would make it impossible to refill with air.

There are several grades of softness, in the foam. Problem is that the dealer in our area only has "extra hard", won't stock the others, cause this is what he has always used. It's too hard on my dixie chopper front tires, but what choice do I have?

(quoted from post at 09:37:21 10/01/13) So I take it there is no DIY kits to foam small personal tires? I tried putting great stuff foam in a plastic ball bat, wouldn't harden, must take air to harden.

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George, I used Great Stuff on a wheelbarrow tire I had a lot of problems with on the advice of a complete idiot. For once, he was right! I injected a mess of Great stuff in, I guesstimated the amount based on the expansion I'd witnessed using it before, put in the valve stem and added air. It worked fine and the tire is still up several years later.

I make no promises, but it worked for me the one time I tried it. My impression is that once the stuff starts expanding it hardens.