How to Fit a Solid Wheelchair Tyre

Following on from our last post which showed how to fit a Solid Wheelchair Castor Tyre, in this blog post we are going to show you how to fit a Solid Self Propelled Wheelchair Tyre. If you want to see our previous post then Click Here

As with the Castor tyres fitting a Solid wheelchair can be tricky because the tyre needs to be stretched to fit. This means that when you receive your tyre it will actually appear as if it is slightly too small. However you can confirm that you have the correct tyre by checking the size shown on the sidewall of the tyre. This will typically be shown like this: 24" x 1.3/8". These dimensions refer to the size of the entire tyre once it has been fitted, e.g. 24" in diameter and 1.3/8" in overall width. You may also see a second size in metric shown like this: 37-540. Metric sizes are shown slightly differently, the first size is the overall width in mm however to second dimension is the diameter of the rim that the tyre will be fitted to so in this case 540mm.

With Solid tyres though there is a another dimension that you need to consider and that is the internal rim width. The tyre that we are fitting in the video is a  24 x 1.3/8" Solid tyre that is suitable for a rim width of between 18-21mm. If the rim width is smaller then we would recommend going for a 24x1" Tyre instead which is designed to fit a 16-18mm rim. To show you how to fit these please see the following video:

You will note that when we fit tyres we do not use washing liquid or heat them up. Whilst this may help, we find it much quicker and obviously it takes far fewer steps to put them on straight away. However whilst the above video is how we fit them it is just a suggestion and you may find a different technique works better for you.

These are the steps we take:

1)Secure the tyre to the rim using a cable tie

2)Put the tyre on the Handrim if the wheel has one

3)Using a strong tyre lever, work your way gradually around the rim until the tyre is fitted

4)Check that the tyre is fully seated all the way round.

To find the products featured in this video please click on the following link:

Solid Tyres