OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Restoring, Customising and Modifying Victa Walk-Behind Rotary Mowers Any tips on restoring rubber wheels

I'm currently restoring 3 VC-160's and I've now got myself stuck. I'm up to the point of cleaning and fixing the wheels,but how? What I would like to do is some how re-grove them as when they were new they had tread.Now there bald.Anybody have any ideas as to how I can do this?

have been contemplating the same task!!!when i was i kid i used to regroove my car tyres by sharpening the edge of a hacksaw blade then by heating it would bend it in half forming a sharpened scoop type shape. it would work very well if somewhat erratic done by hand. maybe if it was setup on a mill or lathe it would work better. havent tried it so cant be sure it would work. but i will give it a go one day.the vc tread runs across the wheel. i was thinking of doing a vic 18 wheel where the tread runs around the circumference.cant hurt to try. bazz

Rotomo /special tyres...Sandblast,then smooth on lathe or lay flat and use a small orbital sander to smooth the walls.Lathe to groove,you can do it plenty of ways count the grooves and make a castleated tool with depth stop or use a single tool with a point like a screw driver and make sure it is depth marked.re clean then you can paint or tyre shine....For later wheels cover the centres,sandblast tyres if you want...or clean them in sugar soap solution i find best instead of petroleum based degreasers..or you can use an alkaline. regrooove on lathe,with the tool you made.....or by hand....or you can make a sleeve for your bench grinder 1/2 inch centre 2 large flat washers and do them on this. BUT do VC wheels have cross tread? if this is the case then your in for some seriously tedious and accurate grooving by hand ONE BY ONE.......GULPS.

Yes the tread goes across the tyre not around it. See why this has become a problem. I just can't throw old (and old looking) tyres onto restored mowers. I was thinking of some kind of heating element,a bit like the tool to burn writing etc into wood.

You would need an indexing fixture to be able to rotate the wheel(s) by equal amounts between grooves. If most of the wheels you are interested in have the same number of tread bars around them, you would only need one indexing disk, but if there are various numbers of bars, you'd need several disks.

You wouldn't need any advanced equipment to use the fixture once it was made, but you'd need a design, and some help from someone with a milling machine and rotary table to make the indexing disks.

How you choose to make the grooves in the tyre might call for some development. If heat will work, you could just mount a soldering iron on the indexing fixture, and pivot it into contact with the tyre, with an adjustable stop to control the depth of groove. I suggest a temperature-controlled soldering iron, or at least a simmerstat in the lead of an ordinary one, might help to control the smoke, smell, and fire brigade callouts.

Thanks grumpy not sure what you mean by indexing feature. Is it some kind of template? As that is what I was thinking,(please correct me if I'm wrong). A template (I don't think would work) as the centre part of the tread is the highest part. I'll put some pictures up of some of the better wheels so you can see the problem I'm faced with. As far as how many bars there are. There vary from wheel to wheel as there is three different size wheels here. The VC-160 mark I has two 4 inch and two 6 inch wheels the other two have 4 and 8 inch wheels. I think that's the right size. Anyway they are different size anyway. There has to be some really good way to do this. Keep the ideas coming guys,I think you may have something grumpy,but I just don't quite understand it yet,please explain more.

That is a crude sketch of a 16 hole indexing plate. The device you want to work on is mounted on the plate, and the plate is mounted by the hole at its center, on a pivot. For simplicity, let's say the pivot is a pin welded to your workbench. You also drill a hole in your workbench, at the same radius from that pivot as the holes around the outside of the indexing plate. You can then drop a pin through a hole in the outside of the plate, through the hole in the workbench, so the plate can't rotate. That gives you 16 repeatable, accurate rotational positions of the device you want to work on (a wheel-and-tyre, in this case). If you have a soldering iron set up on a slide, so the iron is held vertical, you can push the iron across until it touches the tyre, and melts it until the iron has slid to a stop. You then slide the iron back across the other way, rotate the indexing plate by one sixteenth of a turn, and hit the tyre with the soldering iron in that new position. Keep doing that and you've got 16 grooves in the outside of your tyre, with exactly even spacing and depth. If you want a different number of grooves, you need a different indexing plate (with more or fewer holes around it). To make the groove only on the side of the tyre, you adjust the soldering iron higher up so it doesn't reach all the way across the tyre. After going all the way around, you detach the wheel, flip it over, and repeat the process to make the even grooves in the other side, matching the first set you made. If you want flat-bottomed grooves, just file the side of the soldering iron tip until it is flat.

Of course in practice you'd make the whole indexing fixture on its own little frame, you wouldn't make holes in your workbench. In fact, here is a ready-made one:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/S-T-D-Sp..._DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a265176b6

Here is a bigger, more elaborate one with half a dozen different indexing disks for producing different numbers of equally spaced holes:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Horizont..._DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3cc6b39124

Cool grumpy I can see how that could work on the outside of the tyre as there are some tyres that have lost there groves on the outer side. So that maybe a way to do that. Just have to work out the tread part. Don't want to do it free hand as it won't be consistent,that could be a start though.

The indexing fixture isn't for making circumferential grooves, it is for making equally-spaced lateral grooves, like the ones on this Honda mower tread:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Honda-19-and-21-wheels-wheel-lawnmower-mower-200mm-/200655996201

You could use it for making circumferential grooves too of course, those are easy.

Yes I got that and the VC wheels have 4 rings on each side that have almost gone,or on some have gone already.As you can clearly see here on Ty's N.O.S mark III.


Now I know I won't be able to get them to look like these,but at least better than they are now.

That is a very complicated profile, Blumbly, but I've seen your work, you can do it if it is important enough to you to do it. I suggest you will need to practise on unimportant wheels and get good at it before you do any that matter. Also, some of the tyres are rubber - the heat-moulding system will only work on thermoplastic tyres like some of the Honda and Rover ones. I think the ones in your pictures are thermoplastic, but it would be a pity to get that wrong.

No they are all rubber tyres.I guess that's why I'm so worried.

I don't think you can reshape rubber by a thermal process, after it has been cured by the original manufacturing process. If I'm wrong about that, it would be very useful for all of us to know it can be done. If I'm right, you could still re-cut the tread by using a grinder instead of a soldering iron with the indexing fixture we've discussed. However cutting all that detail with an angle grinder, one feature at a time, would be awfully time consuming.

Yes I know that's kind of why I was hoping that somebody had some kind of info on a tyre re-grover.I herd that tyres back in the sixties and seventies were made so you could re-grove. Also most truck tyres are regrovable.I guess that was sort of the answer I was looking for.I'm just not sure as to how easy they are to come by,but you have had some great ideas too grumpy.Ideas that may well work as well.

you might like to see this...
http://www.farmshow.com/view_articles.php?a_id=184