Wheelbarrow repair

April 19, 2025

Over the last year we have been doing a lot of landscaping in the back garden and the wheelbarrow has been put to use moving rocks, gravel and ballast. On the last outing the tyre gave out and needed replacing.

The original wheelbarrow has a pneumatic tyre which we though was best for the last house where there was lots of gravel paths and drive way.

The current house has blockwork and paving so when looking at replacements, a solid tyre was selected. The support axle was just a bolt and that had become a bit rusty so a new stainless steel bolt was purchased.

Some of the bolts holding the barrow to the handles had pulled through the metal so I sourced some large headed bolts as a replacement.

The first challenge was removing the old bolts, they were coach bolts and even after a soak in WD40 the rusted nuts just caused the bolts to spin. I found some halfnuts and screwed them onto the end locking them against each other, that allowed me to use one spanner to hold the bolt firm whilst the other loosen the nut.

I removed obe bolt at a time so I didn’t have a big re-assembly job. One of the holes was particularly large so I used a “penny” washer for that.

The new wheel came with a selection of plastic hubs and I was a bit worried that these would wear down quickly when rubbing against the bolt. But when I removed the old wheel, I discovered a tubular steel bush which I could re-use.

The plastic bushes were not quite the right size so they were drilled out to 16mm and the steel bush pushed in. Last thing was to add some washers between the wheel and the frame and to tighten a lock nut onto the bolt.

In use the new wheel makes sone strange noises but I think that’s the tyre not the bearings. And the barrow has already moved 800kg of soil into the garden.