Tractor Tire Inflation for Dummies

Tractor tire with ballast fluid

If you've never heard of the television show "Green Acres," you can probably be forgiven: it ran even before the "golden age of television" sometime in the mid-sixties. A city boy decided he wanted to move to a farm but his wife was less than enthusiastic. In the introduction, you saw star Eddie Albert driving an old red Farmall tractor while wearing a business suit... 'nuff said. We suspect that Eddie knew as much or more than eHowian Kurt Schanaman when it came to the tries on those tractors. Apparently Kurt had never seen one leak before he penned an article called "How to Fill a Tractor Tire" for the mother lode of misinformation, eHow.com (since moved, for unknown reasons, to Sciencing.com).

Well, some of our staff have seen a leaking tractor tire, and they shared a little secret with us. We'll let you in on that secret in a minute or two. Schanaman, assuming that a tractor tire was no different from the tires on a bicycle, truck, van, car, Zamboni, ATV, furniture dolly, wheelbarrow, etc., provided detailed instructions for inflation, such as

"The required PSI is imprinted into the rubber of the tires near the bead, where the tire meets the metal rim of the wheel."

No duh. We'd kind of hoped that anyone smart enough to get a driver's license already knew this, but hey: it's eHow. Kurt's instructions continue with

"Start the air compressor. Allow it to build maximum tank pressure, at which time the compressor motor will automatically turn off. Press the compressor fill valve firmly over the valve stem nozzle of the tractor tire. Let air enter the tire for 10 to 15 seconds. Remove the compressor fill valve from the tire's valve stem nozzle. Test the tractor tire's air pressure again with the air pressure gauge. Fill the tire with air in cycles of 10 to 15 seconds until the tractor tire pressure falls between the recommended operating tire pressure..." ...which, though probably the recommended way to pressurize a pneumatic tire, again seems a bit on the "overkill" end of the instructions spectrum. Schanaman also has suggestions for inflation pressures in hot or cold weather. Again, probably pretty much OK...

...for your car. But the secret about tractor tires? In order to put more weight on those big-ass rear drive wheels, tractor tires are often partially filled with liquid "ballast"; a water/antifreeze mixture in most cases. Did Kurt have anything to say about that? No: there's not a word about a special attachment that pumps water through a schraeder valve...

That's the secret our ex-farmhand staffer shared with the city boys and girls on the Antisocial Network team. It's too bad no one on the eHow team knew enough about farming to share it with our Dumbass of the Day...

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