The usual one step forward, 6 steps back today.
Ran around my Postal delivery like some demented, running Postie bloke, then jumped in my car & dashed to Newbury to collect Taz's trike rims from the powder-coaters cos they shut at 2 on Fridays.
Just made it in time. A nice tidy job. 30 quid per wheel for shotblasting & powder-coating. Not quite as dark a grey as I'd hoped, more like gloss primer grey, but it's fine.
Back in the car & across town in the afternoon rush hour traffic to get the tyres fitted. The fitters were a bit unsure about the banded rims but bunged the tyres on anyway. "Pssst". No, not me. Bugger, they wouldn't hold pressure. Off with the tyres again & check the rims. The shotblasting's opened up pinholes in the welds. They're perfectly strong, but not airtight. Bugger. I was hoping the powder-coat would seal them, but obviously not.
I tried North Hants Tyres, the custom wheel specialists in Aldershot, on my way home, but they don't stock inner tubes to suit, so it's Plan B now. Bought a large tube of Araldite & a tin of car seam sealant. We'll key the surface of the coating inside the rim & run a generous band of Araldite glue all the way round the welds. Then we'll coat it with seam sealant, (a thick paste used for jointing car body panels). That'll fix it. I hope.
Just to mess up my day even more I discovered when I got home that the tyre fitters had taken several chunks out of the coating on the rim edges with their tyre irons. Bugger. Now I've got to get some paint matched to touch them back in. Ho hum.
