what do you all load yours tire with

 If you are installing new tubes and your rims are smooth I would use CaCl.

Don't let your dog lick the tires when there's a leak if you use antifreeze. I was going to use used antifreeze and even got about five or six 55 gal drums of it but then decided to use CaCl.

You get a leak in a tire with CACL2, the tire goes flat and you repair it within a day or so. Steel does not rust away in that short of time with calcium. We've been running calcium in tires for decades and never replaced a rim due to calcium (or any other reasons) and have got a lot of of flats over the years (i.e. '64 D17). We've never experienced a small leak where it seeped for weeks or months un-noticed thereby causing rim failure. But when you do get a flat, rinse it off during repair. Yes, other liquids are less corrosive.

Dave, What disposal issue?

Seems to me no matter if I get  a new tube/tire or not, CalCl ends up leaking somewhere...so I use antifreeze as well.

Dave, when you drain your tires, anybody that has a gravel drive or lives on a gravel road will pay you for the stuff to dump on the road to keep the dust down. If you spray it on your gravel drive it will keep the dust down for a month or so and keep the weeds down for maybe a year.

Edited by CTuckerNWIL - 14 Jun 2010 at 9:56pm

i did think about for awhile i wasent sure i wanted to take the chance on the synthetic rubber seals being the same as tube rubber, wasent sure how resistant they are to chemicals, i just didnt want to replace 2 tubes that i just replaced and the time to tear them down but if you have had used engine antifreeze in your wheels for awhile say for over a year or 2 then thats good news used engine antifreeze is cheap and easy to get.

kriscrash4x4 wrote: i thought about using used antifreeze but how do you keep the antifreeze from eating the tube and turning it into mush?

I have had it in mine for 4+ years...havent had a problem

A friend of mine uses RV antifreeze.  Dave.

Thinking in Tennessee you might use moon shine. It wouldn't freeze and it would make a great dispenser.

Steel won't rust in a few days when CaCl leaks. WRONG! I had CaCl in my tires and a side wall crack pinched the tube while I was hauling a backhoe to the welding shop. Sprayed the tractor and me (inside tire wall), INSTANT RUST under the factory paint. So while the backhoe was being rebuilt, I shopped for and bought new tires and paid a nearby (to the welding shop) tire shop to pump out both rears and to supply new tubes and mount the tires I bought. No more CaCl for my tractor tires. NEVER again. The new tires plowed better without CaCl than the old tires did with.

I've since moved loader and backhoe from the MF-135 that really wasn't heavy enough for the MF-236 loader to my JD 4020 which is and doesn't have anything but air in the tires and I have some cast iron weights if the 4020 needed more weight. Cast iron weights may rust on their own, but they won't rust the rest of the tractor.

Gerald J.

I'm glad to see that Miller's are using windshield washer fluid, as that's what we used on our last tractor with fluid. You can generally make a good buy on it this time of year. We rigged up a swamp cooler pump, set in a bucket & poured a gallon at a time in the bucket. It actually went fairly fast and now have a good replacement pump for the cooler when needed! Kip

Edited by Kip-Utah - 15 Jun 2010 at 2:30pm

A "swamp cooler" is an evaporative cooler that either goes in a window opening or on top of your house. Because of the low humidity here in the Mountain West they work great and are real common. I know that they don't work so well with high humidity levels common to some other regions. The pump is just an inexpensive cetrifugal unit that circulates water to the evaporation pads. You can buy these pumps around here at any hardware store for around twenty bucks or less. Kip 

Edited by Kip-Utah - 16 Jun 2010 at 2:34pm

Tire dealers here only offer methanol(W/S wash solution)  It isn't colored and does not foam but is alcohol anti-freeze just like w/s wash is.

I have it in my 180 rears, they removed the CaCl and put this in as a replacement after we welded and ground and painted rusted rims.  The alcohol evaporates when you get a leak so all that stays in the ground is water.

The bigger issue was disposal of the CaCl, in this area it is considered hazmat, it has to be disposed of b a licensed hauler, for gravel they are using magnesium chloride and it seems to be less toxic to the ditches.  Many of the cement companies will mix and spread it here.