Front Tire Assembled

Tonight I repaired the rear window by gluing back in the two pieces that had broken off the window when opening the attach holes. I didn't touch it since I glued it in to not disturb it and I'll check tomorrow if it worked out well. The photo didn't turn out so well as I had put transparent tape over it to hold it in place and the reflection makes it a bit hard to see through it.



Then I followed the instructions of 35-02 and split the front wheel rim.


The drawing on 35-02 shows washers under the nuts and the bolt heads holding together the rim but mine didn't have any washers, there were only bolts and nuts coming out.

After locating the tube I had a really hard time to figure out if the special valve shoulder washer and the valve nut would have to hold the tube to the rim somehow. After a lot of browsing through other blogs I found the solution on the Matco website. To save you some time, here's the answer: Leave the valve nut and the valve washer alone, tighten the nut maybe but the assembly stays as it is. The outer nut right under the cap should get removed as I read the plans and it doesn't appear to serve any purpose if you left it in place anyway.
So after finally locating the answer to the tube installation, it was on to applying (way too much) tire talc and squeeze that tube into the tire.


Then I had to slowly inflate and then deflate the tire and repeat the process a few times while squeezing and massaging the deflated tire in between to make sure the tube was wrinkle-free inside.
Finally I inflated it to roughly 28 psi as instructed and put the assembled tire aside.



That ended my evening in the shop. Next it's on to the more tricky main tires.