Running Gear Rebuild Questions

I picked up a decent old running gear this weekend that i am looking to rebuild and I have just a couple general questions at this point.

The Running Gear is a Cobey, That is all I can still make out on the tag! It need a bit of help. I"ll need to do a bit of welding on the tongue as it has a stress crack but not too major. I will also need to see if I can"t straighten out the steering arm. At some point in time someone made too tight of a run with it and bent it a bit. that"ll be tough to straighten! Any good ideas on that? All I thought of was trying to heat it and bend it back a bit. not sure thats a good idea though.

I"ll be replacing all the hardware/bolts on it with new ones that are hardened.

The questions I have other than the steering arm is:

Can I use 15" rims on it? The current tires/rims are 16" and pretty rusty. Probably could use three of them but I thought I should just try to go to a junkyard and find other rims. I wasn"t sure if changing down to 15" would be bad or good? Then I was planning to buy some implement tires of the rear anyway. The front I MIGHT just use a radial or something. I"m sure everyone has a differing opinion on that.

I assume the axle hubs will come off much like a trailers would? Remove the end cap and such? Never know since I never did it on a hay wagon.

The other question I had was, what is the typical length of a gear used for a hay wagon? I was thinking it was 12" center to center of the gear axles? This particular one is 13"? Maybe i"m just off in my thinking?

Thank you for your help and suggestions.

The wheel bearings are just like any triler or car, it probably has Timken tapered roller bearings in it now.

For length of the gear under the wagon, it depends on what length of a bed you have. I build them 16' long, boards across the stringers, and have the runnning gear as long as I can, but if they don't stretch I try to have the rear axel about 3'-3 1/2' from the back and the tounge about 4-4 1/2' out the front for the baler. I also nail a 3' peice of 2x4 to the front of the wagon for a place to push off of with my feet when grabbing a bale off the baler. You can set the length of the runnnig gear to different lengths, you just have to pull out the bolt(s) in the pipe and see what kind of adjustment you have.

Overall, I've never heard a bad thing about a Colby gear, we never had one until 2 years ago but it's only under a small gravity box so it doesn't get used much, although it still pulls straight with a sloppy tounge.

Donovan from Wisconsin

You can switch to 15" but;

You might want to leave those 16" on the wagon and find a new rim to match.

They will ride smoother and You can find good heavy duty takeoff tires for pickups to replace them.

We bought 16" rims for a wagon just so I could use the 8 ply takeoffs from my pickup.

Gary