Repairing rusty tractor wheel

A friend of mine had a small AC tractor that the wheels are rusted where valve stem is. Does any one make a repair piece that could be welded in ? Thanks
 

There are various ways. You won't find a patch to match the curves unless you have a donor wheel to cut it from. The simplest method is to weld a steel washer with the same sized hole over the thin area, but the thinness usually runs too far. This usually leaves you with a lot of hammer work to bend a piece of steel to the right curves. I found a piece of bar stock at my local hardware in their steel display that has a curved cross section to it. It matches the curve in the radius of the wheel pretty well, so that I need to just give it a little bend so that it matches the bend around the rim.
 
Rims are nothing special as far as steel content. So depending on the size of the hole you can use several things for your repair.

1) IF the hole is not that big you can just repair the rusted out spot with a large washer. I usually cut/grind out a spot so the washer fits flush. Then weld it in and grind it smooth on both sides.

2) IF the hole is much larger than any washer then find a piece of flat steel the same thickness as the rim and make yourself a patch out of it.

3) IF you have another old rim around I have just cut sections out to make my repair piece for the rim I want to use. I have actually cut hole flanges out to repair rare hard to find rims. An example would be the rims on a JD 330. They are hard to find. So lets say you have one of the same diameter off a common tractor like an AC wd45. (just an example) Cut whatever sections you need out of the donor rim. Then just cut the damaged rim to match. Weld it all together and grind it down. You good to go.


As far as manufactured repair sections. I have never seen any for sale. You can find rim blanks that you weld your centers into but that is all I have seen.
 
Not to my knowledge. Depending on how large the area is and how particular you are about the final result there are many ways to make a patch. Smaller patches are easily accomplished with washers, slightly larger repairs can be made with "fender" washer. I have cut sections from other rims and welded them in and bent panels from scratch. If the repair area is expansive replacement rims get attractive real quick, cost vs time and money spent.
 
Why not just drill another hole in rim where it's not rusted so bad and then weld a plate over old hole and fill in on outside, then you don't have to mess with a washer. that's how i have did mine in the past.
 
Steve a local welder used to get the new rim holes, a section of rim formed to look like a valve stem hole. I don't know where he got them, might google something like that and find one.
 
I have used 5/8th flat washers and with a little heat formed them to fit the contour and welded them in and with a little grinding and polishing to make them smooth . If done correctly you will never see the repair.
 
Depends on the size of the hole. The "torque slide" rims on my old 350 cost a mint and mine were horribly rusted out. Bought another 38" rim for $5 (rusted out at the valve stem hole too) and cut a sections out of it about a foot long each and welded them in on my rims - the sections included the bead. Spent some time welding and grinding and you can't tell that anything was ever done to them except the valve stem hole doesn't have the flat spot anymore.

It took a lot of work with the sand blaster to get them clean enough to paint.
 
On my MM ZA the rims were very rusted not only by the valve stem but other places as well. So I bought new rims from the local farm tire store As I recall about $135 each. Then i cut out the centers of the rims and rewelded them in the new rims. New paint. New tires. Show tractor not a puller so no tire fluid.
 

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