Tractor tire wrestling

One thing that I've learned about heavy equipment is that you either pay for it in payments -- as when you buy it new -- or you pay for it in maintenance.  My big kubota tractor has been all sorts of useful on the farm, but being the thrifty individual I am, I purchased it used, and so have been going through it slowly fixing stuff that the previous owner(s) didn't do correctly. 
  Some of this is small stuff; they used regular hex nuts instead of lug nuts on the wheels -- that's small to fix, but its a dangerous jerry-rig.  After I spotted that I went through the tractor and looked at every pin and bushing, and sure enough, found several where they'd used the wrong part.  Fixing that stuff was a bit more complicated -- in one case they'd stopped making the part, and I had to have it fabricated, but now I'm pretty sure that the tractor is good in all respects and safe to operate.  But all of that costs time and money -- which I wouldn't have spent (probably) if I'd bought a new tractor. 
  Another big expense is the darned tires.  In this case the tires are down to about 10% tread, I got a hole in one of them, and after taking it off, found that the tire had ten (10!) patches in it, so I bit the bullet and bought a new set of rear tires. 

The tire itself probably weighs 250lbs.  Then you fill it with 800lbs of water saturated with calcium.  I don't know why calcium is there -- maybe to prevent the water from freezing or retard rust, dunno -- and so each tire weighs in at comfortably over 1,000lbs.  So you pump the liquid out of the tires through the valve stem, which takes about 30 minutes per tire, into two 55 gallon drums per tire.

Then you dismount the tire, and beat on it with a sledgehammer, and eventually remove it from the wheel.  and do something similar to put it back on.  This is just sooo much fun that I had to share it-I called the local tire place and had them do the work.  Took 3 hours. 

 With the tire off I get to see parts of the tractor that I don't usually.  This is a huge cast iron weight that's bolted onto the rear hub.   I put a quarter up there for size; it's probably 15" wide by 30" tall, and about 4" thick.  I'd guess a weight of 700lbs for this bit.  All of the weight - tires, wheel weights, calcium -- is there so that you can lift heavy loads with the front loader and not tip over forward. 

Well, after watching this for a while, the new tires are pretty, and all for less than the cost of two weeks in Hawaii with an open bar!  woo hoo!