Not sure exactly Colin, standing on my head with caliper in hand with dim light, looks about 0.650"... Kalle took his tracks apart for pics and measurement for Chris, perhaps he's got a much more accurate number, eh Kalle?
I put new shoes on the WA500!
The tires have pretty thick sidewalls & sole, still some hollow space though to add nearly two pounds of steel BB's.
I had originally thought I would use the rims/tires from my scrapped 740, but discovered that the rims were too small of diameter to fit over the gearhead with it's offset spur gear output shaft. The rims from Fumotec for these other tires were large enough diameter, but the bolt pattern was beyond macgivering. The oem rims are a bit too wide & don't have a bead trough like the Fumotec rims, but are a couple mm bigger in diameter which will help grip the bead, and the BB's should help to both lock the tire to the rim, as well as keep the sidewalls pushed outward to help keep bead seated to the rim's edge. I used a bit of air pressure to expand both sidewalls to set the bead, which then created a little bit of a cavity & the BB's now slosh a bit... I'll see what happens.
Nearly have my new steel bucket finnished, little bit wider, but everything else is virtually the same. Just need to smooth out some welds with the grinder, turn some brass bushings for the pivots & give it a coat of paint.
I've made a pretty good dent in screening the wet lumps pile this week, but before dumping the damp dirt from the area that I just mined it from, I thought I'd better lay down a layer of bone dry crush so I don't have a welded (so to speak) glob of cement hard clay packed back in there when I go to retrieve it in dry form next winter for processing.
