Replacing the Nosewheel Tire:
On my 91st flight as I taxied to the runway I got a flat front tire. It was fine in preflight and movement was good for about 3/4 mile, then suddenly I could feel a slight pull to the right, then a little more drag and I knew immediately I had a problem and stopped. I radioed the CTAF (only a couple of other crop dusters were working that morning and they didn't miss a beat using either end of the runway on a beautiful relatively calm morning. After shutdown I hopped out and sure enough verified front tire flat. Radio back on to explain situation and alert folks I was pushing back to the hangar. Thankfully it was slightly downhill, and it was a front tire. I was solo and could un-ballast the nose and make it really light and it rolled no problem (the tire took normal inflated shape). One of the ground crew for the crop dusters helped me the 2nd half of the way back once off the main taxiway, and I was appreciative.
When I removed the tire I was surprised to find the rubber crumbling off of the inside and exposing the cords. Not sure how much of this happened when, but I was really lucky to have this show up at my airport, on the ground before takeoff. This tire was at least 13 years old and had many years just sitting in the garage. It's a Specialty Tires of America tire and it looked fine on the outside with plenty of tread and no visible degradation of the sidewalls. There had been discussion on the builders forum over the years suggesting use of more slick front tires for reduced stone throwing, and I'd been thinking I'd use the Kenda tire that Andrew Anunson had refitted on his project. I checked several others but the Kenda still seemed like a good fit and was easily available without an arm and a leg in shipping. Though it's the same nominal size (3.00-4) as the Old tire, it's inflated max diameter is slightly larger. Andrew had verified that it fit fine in the nose wheel fork, but I was a little nervous about retraction into the wheel well. It turned out retraction was just fine with no interference. Lesson from this is: keep track of the age of your tires. If you take a long time to build, you should inspect your tires inside again before using them for flight. I had already replaced one of my main tires when this happened due to early tread wear from imperfect main gear alignment (re-alignment after fully configuring airplane is covered on this page). I replaced the other main tire immediately after this so all tires were effectively less than a couple of years old.
On my 91st flight as I taxied to the runway I got a flat front tire. It was fine in preflight and movement was good for about 3/4 mile, then suddenly I could feel a slight pull to the right, then a little more drag and I knew immediately I had a problem and stopped. I radioed the CTAF (only a couple of other crop dusters were working that morning and they didn't miss a beat using either end of the runway on a beautiful relatively calm morning. After shutdown I hopped out and sure enough verified front tire flat. Radio back on to explain situation and alert folks I was pushing back to the hangar. Thankfully it was slightly downhill, and it was a front tire. I was solo and could un-ballast the nose and make it really light and it rolled no problem (the tire took normal inflated shape). One of the ground crew for the crop dusters helped me the 2nd half of the way back once off the main taxiway, and I was appreciative.
When I removed the tire I was surprised to find the rubber crumbling off of the inside and exposing the cords. Not sure how much of this happened when, but I was really lucky to have this show up at my airport, on the ground before takeoff. This tire was at least 13 years old and had many years just sitting in the garage. It's a Specialty Tires of America tire and it looked fine on the outside with plenty of tread and no visible degradation of the sidewalls. There had been discussion on the builders forum over the years suggesting use of more slick front tires for reduced stone throwing, and I'd been thinking I'd use the Kenda tire that Andrew Anunson had refitted on his project. I checked several others but the Kenda still seemed like a good fit and was easily available without an arm and a leg in shipping. Though it's the same nominal size (3.00-4) as the Old tire, it's inflated max diameter is slightly larger. Andrew had verified that it fit fine in the nose wheel fork, but I was a little nervous about retraction into the wheel well. It turned out retraction was just fine with no interference. Lesson from this is: keep track of the age of your tires. If you take a long time to build, you should inspect your tires inside again before using them for flight. I had already replaced one of my main tires when this happened due to early tread wear from imperfect main gear alignment (re-alignment after fully configuring airplane is covered on this page). I replaced the other main tire immediately after this so all tires were effectively less than a couple of years old.