Ok, good points Kent, i have some news and info on this. Here's the issue: The mower is stock, no changes at all from stock. The wheel drive is just short and/or mounted inboard from the factory.
The mower was purchased with the hitting tires known, but i didn't look that close at it. I figured it was wrong wheels, but did not know how hard they were to get.
Grasshopper must have had special wheels made for the bar tires to accomodate this. The wheels on it are the typical 7" wide rim sold for trailer / mower use. The bar tire wheels are 9" wide, and very deep offset.
He sold it to me with a lug nut spacing wheel surface out about 1/2" With the tires on it, which are already too wide for the wheel, the tires bulge more than normal.
Here's a shot of the lug installed before wheel:
Then you install the wheel, you end up with this:
The wheel mount surface is right where that weld seam is in the center of the wheel. It's got to be this direction to get at the tire stem, and it would actually be worse flipped. With the tire on the rim, you end up with the tire sidewall hitting that shaft in the lower left of the picture. It actually wore holes in the sidewalls of the tires.
That's where i cut thru the tires to get them off because it was so thin there. The tires both had tubes in them and he told me they had tubes because the tires were rubbing. I don't think he knew how to fix it really. He was a hack, living on disability and flipping mowers. He actually called me up to come get another one just like this a week later. Thanks but no thanks.
I did get the first guy to finally find 2 good rims and i paid him this morning to ship UPS.
He sent me photos of the new rims:
So you can see how wide they are, and how close the mounting surface is to the back of the wheel.
So those are on the way finally.
In other news, i am not having much luck finding a new die for the crimper, so i have resorted to trying to straighten the cage, and am having some success. Here's what i used to straighten the outer plate:
Seems to be working ok. The spring plate i will have to weld a couple spots, and the backing plate will need to be welded and ground a little. I did find a guy on ebay who has more of the correct dies, and asked me which would be sellers. I named off the 3 i thought would move well and he will post them saturday.
I don't know that i will buy them all, probably just the one i need, but we shall see. If my repairs work, i should be able to at least get my job done, even if i don't get a flat crip but a barrel field crimp. I don't care for those as much, harder to measure the diameter.
