Concrete, steel and lead wheel weigh build pics

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Concrete, steel and lead wheel weight build pics

I made some concrete, steel and lead wheel weights for my L4330 several months ago after looking, unsuccessfully for fairly cheap cast iron or steel wheel weights. I may as well have been looking for gold plate weights while I was at it for the prices that most people wanted for the things. So I decided to just build my own.

The main steel frame, starting with 6 5/8" grade 8 bolts from TSC and then a good bit of rebar welded to keep them all in line. I attached the bolts to my tractor rear wheel in the 6 holes I *assume* were for wheel weights, then welded the rebar to them to keep them in line etc.

For the form, I used the bottom 8" of a 30 gallon plastic barrel. I took an empty 30 gallon barrel, put it against my rear wheels and it seemed to fit just about right, filling most of the empty space, but still leaving room to access the tire valve stem. Drilled the 6 holes for the grade bolts and then drilled a center hole so I could grind the barrel bottom on my concrete driveway to completely "flatten" the top of the barrel.

Put the frame in the barrel, added two 5/8" bolt nuts plus one 1" nut so that I could add barbell weights in the future if I wanted, then added the lead, attaching it to the frame with SS hose clamps.

More to come!

 

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First wheel weight filled with concrete:

Lifting it up to remove the form via the special tool I made and my FEL loader.

First wheel weight, 260 lbs right on the money!

More later!

 

[FTG-05]

Suffered a major setback the first time I attempted to install the wheel weight on the tractor.

Totally unworkable setup:

Next up: success!

 

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So I made a special tool that would both attach to my lifting tool and to my shop lift:

With this setup, I wasn't trying to partially lift 260 lbs, get it into place, then line the bolts with the holes and move the weight into place.

With this tool, I could move the weight in and out, rotate about it's axis and lift it up and down as needed via the shop lift. That left only rotating the rear wheel to line up the bolt holes, which required having the tractor jacked up (no biggie).

The only real hard part to this set up was getting the weight and tool into the shop lift arm holes: +260 lbs is a lot of weight! However, once that was done, it only took about 10 minutes to mount the weight - easy peasy.

Success!

And painted! Note the easy access to the valve stem.

2nd wheel weight coming up!

 

[FTG-05]

The 2nd wheel weight went pretty well after the first one was done and mounted (I did them one at a time).

The only downsides to the 2nd wheel weight was that it weighed slightly less (240 lbs vs 260 lbs for the first one) and I could not get the form to remain a circle when I filled it with concrete and the weight came out of the form out of round, the pics below show it pretty clearly:

However, the bottom line is that neither issue will affect it's use at all. So overall, I'm pretty happy the way they turned out. And one thing I like is that if I decide to get some barbell weights, I can add them pretty easily. Walmart has 100 lbs bar bell weights for $100; a little cheaper than what people were wanting for cast steel wheel weights around here.

Hope you enjoyed it; feel free to ask questions.

Thanks,

 

[koja]

Good job , those should help.

 

[Billdog350]

Looks like a good amount of engineering and it turned out well!

How much time and $ would you say you have invested in these? A few bucks for rebar and bolts, plus concrete and paint...plus the mounting tools from scrap metal, call it $20 each?

I have those same tires on my L3710 and I'm going thru the process of replacing one of the rims that calcium rusted out and replacing with RimGuard/Ballast Star. I believe each of my tires holds 600lbs of ballast!

Did you do these weights instead of liquid ballast or in addition?

 

[FTG-05]

Looks like a good amount of engineering and it turned out well!

How much time and $ would you say you have invested in these? A few bucks for rebar and bolts, plus concrete and paint...plus the mounting tools from scrap metal, call it $20 each?

I have those same tires on my L3710 and I'm going thru the process of replacing one of the rims that calcium rusted out and replacing with RimGuard/Ballast Star. I believe each of my tires holds 600lbs of ballast!

Did you do these weights instead of liquid ballast or in addition?

Let's see:

- 16 8" grade 8 bolts from TSC at $/lb (I forget how much)
- 140 lbs of lead at $100 (used about 80% of it). I got the lead from a friend who casts his own bullets. This particular lead was contaminated and not useful for bullets. For pure weight thought, it's perfect.
- 4-5 sticks of 10" 1/2" rebar at $5 per stick
- 5 or so bags of concrete at $3-4 each.

So the lead was the biggest cost but what it got me was an additional 57 lbs (calculated) over more concrete.

The wheel weights are in addition to tire ballast - I want all the weight I can get.

 

[Lil Foot]

This particular lead was contaminated and not useful for bullets.

Glad to hear it, I almost cried when I saw you had used lead for this. Lead may soon be very expensive/impossible to get soon.
Nice job on the weights.

 

[Billdog350]

Lil Foot, are you talking about Lead for use in bullets and such? If so, can people use car batteries? For the $5 recycle charge you can get probably 20lbs of lead....just has the acid you need to dispose of and break down the battery...

 

[Lil Foot]

Car batteries will work, but between dealing with the acid, the tear down, rinsing of the lead, & drying the lead, it's a lot of work. I've done it, but it's not fun. Plus the lead is usually dead soft, needing a little alloying for optimum performance. But it's probably going to come to that, especially with most of the new wheel weights being made from zinc & potmetal.