Protecting the feet (Tyresocks)
The feet on the contact end of Powerisers are prone to wear with use as you would expect them to. With replacement feet costing nearly £20 a lot of Poweriser users have come up with mods to prevent this wear. Most of these mods involve covering the existing feet with cutup bicyle tyres. These 'Tyresocks' will them prevent the existing feet wearing to the metal and in some cases increase the grip offered by Powerisers.
The technique is very straight-forward and requires some easily obtainable parts
These are:-
- A bicycle tyre - a tyre with about 14 inch circumference is optimal
- Jubliee clips - at least one per leg to hold the tyre is place
- Adhesive tape - for increased tyre grip and protecting the jubilee clip
There are a few options when it comes to selecting the tyre , should the tyre's tread be a road type or a nobbly type and what circumference should the tyre be? A road type tyre, although offering less grip in muddy conditions has a thicker tread if you disregard the nobbles and should last longer than its off road counterpart and is my prefered choice. The circumference of the tyre is arbitaty with smaller circumfernces being prefered because the 'bend' is tighter and fits better on the exisiting foot. Other users buy bigger tyres to save cost as the boots still wear at a pretty quick rate and a larger tyre can be used to make more shoes, the choice is yours.
Once type of tyre has been decided on then the tyre needs to be correct length strips using a sharpknife. The side walls of the tyre also needs to be cut of. The sidewall of the tyre is the bit of the side of the type without any tread which sometimes has cable inside it to hold it onto the rim of the wheel. The sidewall including any cable needs to be cutoff all the way to the main tread part of the tyre as neatly as possible thus removing any surplus tyre.
Wrap some tape twice around the leg just above the 'hoof' of the leg this will add friction between the boot and the leg and stop the boot from slipping when finished. Now for the hard bit, the tyre need to wrapped around the existing foot and pulled up either side of the leg ready for the jubilee clip to go over. This is probably at least a two or three man job as the tyre will need to be held in place while the jubilee clip is tightened (not an easy job). DO NOT OVER TIGHTEN THE JUBLIEE CLIPS as they can damage the lower leg
Once the clip has been tightened and you are happy with the way the tyre is sitting you may wrap some tape over the jubliee clip to stop it catching on anything.
It must be stessed that this type of modification may prove to be dangeous, espically if the boot slips in use, and we at Jumppoweriser.co.uk cannot take any responsiblity for any harm that comes from the ill fitting of TyreSocks.
However the mod should prove successful if ALL following steps have been taken:-
- Make sure that you use jubilee clips?
- Did you cut the sidewalls off the tyre? (all the way to the tread)
- Did you pre-tape the top and apply considerable force to the tire while wrapping it?
- Are your clips tight enough?
Replacing Pads
Another solution for feet ware on Powerisers is from Martin Alkin who replaces his worn pads with a similar compound of rubber whenever they show soigns of wear. He gets a local tyre vulcaniser to stick on replacement pads using a special adhesive.
These replacement pads last longer than the stock pads as all the pads surface area is fixed to th leg rather than just relying on wrapping the pads around the feet. Martin beleives that the feeling of the pads is a lot more precise than using TyreSocks but says that anyone following his advice should overlap the pad over the aluminion edge of the feet to prevent the legs slipping when at angles. The cost of replacing the pads is about €15 (£11).
Article added by: Andy R 23/01/2007
