A while ago I nearly lost one of my Wheeleez balloon wheels while I was out on the
water.
I'm not sure how it came loose, as I'm very careful to make sure it's clipped onto the
axle correctly, but it did.
I was blissfully unaware as it floated off and the only indication something was wrong
was when I had a 'hit' on one of my trolling lines. Luckily I looked around and saw that
the wheel had tapped the line as it drifted off. I did a rather repaid about-turn and
managed to scoop the escapee wheel up with my landing net.
I'm now the proud owner of a nice, new Trax 2-30 cart and since replacement wheels
for this mother run at over 100 bucks, I want to try and avoid loosing one overboard.
So I made a quick and easy little 'wheel retention system' as insurance against this.
Firstly I removed the four bolts from the hub and took out the inboard disc that keeps
the hub bushes in place. I then drilled two 6mm holes into the plastic between two of
the bolt-holes.
I then threaded a short (about 10cm/3") section of 5mm bungee cord through the
holes and tied it off at each end, making sure the knot was pulled as tight as possible.
This leaves a loop of about 2.5cm/1" protruding from the outside of the disc.
The trickiest part of the operation was getting the bolts and the disc back in place,
as the two halves of the rim were pushed apart by the pressure of the tyre. I had
to almost completely deflate the tyres to be able to get the bolts to reach right
through.
The other slightly fiddly part was to get the knots in the bungee to fit under the
disc. It did require a bit of pushing and squeezing, but it fitted in the end - this is
why it was important to pull the knots as tight as possible, to make them as small
as possible, in order to fit under the disc.
Once back together, the wheels are popped back onto the axle. As you can see,
the loops are pretty unobtrusive.
The final piece in the puzzle is a length of bungee cord with two clips/hooks on
each end. I used a 60cm length of 8mm bungee and attached it to the hooks so
there was just enough stretch to allow it to be clipped over the wheel loops and
wrapped once around the axle.
The loops aren't under a huge amount of stretch, but it's enough to prevent the
wheels from sliding off the axle, should they come loose.
Cheers,
Mike.