vacuum pump for innertube repairs

[joetech]

Am I literally the only person to think of this?????

I work at a tire shop... once in awhile we have to do inner tubes.

What we have to do is blow up the tire, find the leak, buff around the leak, put vulcanizing compound on the leak, air down the tire enough to get it on the bench, put a patch on the leak, air it back up make sure it doesn't leak, then air it down enough to get it back into the tire, then air it back up again to inflate the tire.

As we all know it can be tedious airing down a tube... stand on the tube, put another tire on the tube, etc etc.

I am thinking that we could get a cheap air operated vacuum pump and air them down in literally a tenth of the time or less.

The vacuum pump is $17 at harbor freight. A piece of fuel line or even a hose off of a can of fix a flat that fits over the port and a valve stem... and viola.

Tell me why this wouldn't work and save five or ten minutes of time fixing an innertube please?

My boss looked at me cross eyed with one eyebrow raised high and said I'd never needed to do that before.... kinda the same thing he told me when I suggested (and got) a topside creeper.

 

[The Cobbler]

how about a venturi & use the shop air , im thinking one of those venturi cleaning solvent guns

 

[joetech]

how about a venturi & use the shop air , im thinking one of those venturi cleaning solvent guns

We have a air powered tire bead vacuum at the shop, I am going to try that before I go buy something else.

I don't know how kindly the boss will take to me touching his brand new tire bead vacuum!!!!!

 

[Indexmill]

Who repairs innertubes? Or better yet, why?

 

[joetech]

Who repairs innertubes? Or better yet, why?

We do.... all the time. Car, truck, and farm tire inner tubes can be expensive so we repair them. Costs the customer $22 to fix tubes at my shop.

 

[cvairwerks]

Pull the valve stem and simply roll the tube is all we ever did when we had them on the bench.

 

[larry_g]

Quick experiment, tap into the vacuum on a running engine. Pull the vacuum brake booster line and plumb it into a tube and see what happens. I don't think that you will gain much. An engine is a very large vacuum pump and if it doesn't help a lot then a small lab style pump is not going to do anything.

lg
no neat sig line

 

[goodwrench]

google inner tube deflator. little venturi that screws on valve stem, apply air pressure and it ***** tube flat.

 

[gungatim]

how about a venturi & use the shop air , im thinking one of those venturi cleaning solvent guns

actually, you can make a pretty cheap venture type gun using the $3 HF blow gun, the one with the 4" long thin tube. cut a piece of 3/8 clear tube and cut a hole 4 or 5" from the end and stick the air nozzle in the hose. it will draw pretty good from the other end.

not my idea, I saw it on a forum (maybe this one) years ago as a DIY soda blaster gun. tried it and it worked pretty good. I imagine it would work just as well slipping the open end of the hose on a tire stem.

 

[kb1982]

If you dont feel like making one , just look up vac generators. Most use compressed air utilizing the venturi effect. We use them them on robots at work to pull parts from injection molding machines.

Sent from my LML713DL using Tapatalk

 

[rlitman]

...I am thinking that we could get a cheap air operated vacuum pump and air them down in literally a tenth of the time or less.

The vacuum pump is $17 at harbor freight. A piece of fuel line or even a hose off of a can of fix a flat that fits over the port and a valve stem... and viola.

Tell me why this wouldn't work and save five or ten minutes of time fixing an innertube please? ...

It might work, but it might not save much time. The HF pneumatic "vacuum pump" is just a venturi. It uses a lot of air (over 10 CFM), but has a pretty slow flow rate for what it "pumps". I use one to evacuate the chamber on my vacuum oil extractor, and for that it works for my purposes. However, in my use, the highest input pressure would be atmospheric pressure. I suspect that the venturi would work rather poorly when the vacuum input has positive gauge pressure.

For your purposes, you don't need a very good vacuum. Just something that flows rather fast. An diaphragm vacuum pump would probably do great. Just open the output of a cheap tire inflater compressor, and hook your tire valve up to the input. For this, you'll need to find a compressor that has a pipe threaded screw on inlet filter.

 

[joetech]

google inner tube deflator. little venturi that screws on valve stem, apply air pressure and it ***** tube flat.

That's really cool. I knew there had to be something that would do it. And only $2.99 to boot!

Thank you very much!!!!!!

 

[Leaflessshadetree]

Ever try using a shop vac?