DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

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shane
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DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

Post by shane »

I've used a DIY scupper trolley for the last few years, which has worked well although the wheels have been through several iterations.

I started with metal trolley wheels off a bunnings hand cart before they rusted out. Then I went to some $12 green machine plastic drift trike wheels from Kmart. These looked promising being very wide but I found with my heavily loaded PA that the wheels would just dig into soft sand, pushing a wedge before them and being pretty useless on the beach. They were better on hard surfaces but noisy being hard plastic. Next I got some slightly wider trolley wheels with plastic hubs off ebay. These would at least roll through sand but were still extremely hard work in the soft stuff. Regular punctures were a pain and eventually the rubber tread de-laminated with the tires basically falling apart. So it was back to the drawing board trying to research an alternative wheel that would work and be light on the pocket.

The best wheels for beach work seem to be the bigger wheeleez beach wheels but these cost upwards of $100 per wheel which is more than I wanted to pay. The same sort of thing is about $25 on alibaba but I wasn't going to be ordering 100 of them. :lol: The key to getting wheels to work on soft sand seems to be a larger diameter combined with a soft surface to increase contact area. So I decided to modify my existing green machine wheels by adding a layer of foam to increase the diameter. Thick foam sheet was going to be too expensive so I ended up just buying a roll of expansion joint foam for the hardware store at around $10.

The width of the foam is about half the green machine wheel width so two side by side covers it nicely. I cut lengths long enough for three diameters then sliced wedges off each end to provide a smooth transition. Then I applied contact adhesive to both sides of the foam and the wheels and left it until touch dry. Then it was just a matter of wrapping the foam lengths around each wheel with a bit of tape over the end for extra security. The final result was a much larger diameter wheel that seems robust enough with a solid tread area but also a bit of give to spread the load.

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I tried them out last night at a couple of different launches. Over hard surfaces like bitumen, gravel and dirt the wheels rolled silently and with less resistance than before. When I got onto the soft sand it was amazing how easily the yak rolled over the soft stuff without ever looking like digging in. This included easily pulling a very heavily loaded PA up a steepish incline of soft sand that previously would have had me tugging and straining for each half metre. Time will tell what their longevity will be like but it seems promising and if the surface wears I can always just put on another layer. :up:
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Tim399
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Re: DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

Post by Tim399 »

That looks good, I had recently been thinking the same thing shane. How to have a softer wheel (i have a c tug) but not get punctures. I thaught about somehow filling a rubber tube with a soft foam. But how? Now seing yours could it help the longevity if you could somehow wrap an old, punctured even, tube around the foam? It turns out i have a roll of expansion foam i had forgotten about

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Re: DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

Post by laneends »

Looks like you are heading off to the drag strip :lol:
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Re: DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

Post by Anthony »

Thanks Shane, I was just going to buy the wheeleez when I get my PA because it seemed like the only solution for soft sand but I'll give this a go and save some money. Would you mind giving me some details on the construction of the cart? Did you reinforce the PVC pipe or does it cope with weight of the PA without reinforcement?
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Re: DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

Post by yakhangger »

Great Shane thanks...I have been trying to give away a set of green machine wheels for an age now, but not now..I'm off to the hardware shop for sure :up: :D :up: :up:
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Re: DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

Post by Anthony »

I ended up having a go at Shane's idea with the expansion joint foam. I couldn't find any green machine wheels but K-mart had some wheels for their own version of the green machine so I went with those instead.
IMG_0029.jpg
The wheels measured 16cm wide and 24cm in diameter and can be had for $8 each. The axle hole on the wheels is 11.8mm which is a bit of a pain because it's a odd size so I drilled out the holes with a 31/64" (~12.3mm) drill bit so I could use some M12 threaded rod as the axle. At bunnings I got a roll of 150mm x 10mm x 6m expansion joint foam for $17 along with some 20mm PVC pipe and fittings for the frame of the cart. The 150mm foam is slightly too narrow for the wheels but it works fine. 6 meters was just enough to wrap each wheel 3 times so I'm glad I didn't make any cutting mistakes like I usually do. The total cost for the whole cart was $55.8.
IMG_0025.JPG
The cart works better than I was expecting. I've used it about half a dozen times on soft sand and it rolls over it like it's on pavement. Even steep soft sand hills aren't a problem. The only real issue is that the wheel are quite bulky so there might be issues if you want to store the trolley on the kayak. I just leave take them back to the car once the kayak is next to the water though.
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shane
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Re: DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

Post by shane »

:clap: :clap: :up:
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Re: DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

Post by laneends »

i wonder if you make up a slip over sleeve arrangement that you could fit over regular pneumatic wheels when the need arose..Though it might be hard to keep them securely on.
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shane
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Re: DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

Post by shane »

laneends wrote:i wonder if you make up a slip over sleeve arrangement that you could fit over regular pneumatic wheels when the need arose..Though it might be hard to keep them securely on.
Some large diameter PVC pipe that just slides over the pneumatic wheels would be a good base to do the foam mod to.
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Re: DIY Beach Wheels (on the cheap)

Post by Gozz »

My first kayak had the old kmart green machine wheels, hard to beat for the price and pretty good on the sand.
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