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Yesterday the 1980s-era Burley trailer got re-tired then the left wheel bearings went. I wrote in a post, I'd switch to the damaged, 1990s-era, Burley trailer; instead, I've tried hard to fix the 1980s Burley. I said tried, not succeeded.

Fix Number. One:

Done before bed; involved winding heavy coated steel wire around the axle, spring-like, to fill up the gap left by the bearing bits. Made it one block the next morning, before the patient rejected the transplant.

Fix number two:

Used an aluminium handlebar, which had the diameter, and wall thickness to both fit over the axle end -- which looked a lot like the end on a carriage bolt -- and inside the wheel hub. It did not fit over two bearing sleeves, still on the axle, so I cut three, roughly, half-inch pieces off the handlebar, and cut one side of each lengthwise, so I could open up the diameter, slip each of them on the axle between the bearing sleeves, and close them back down to their original diameter.

[caption id="attachment_2735" align="alignnone" width="497"] Step one: Could've probably just done step two with a longer piece of handlebar -- too late now![/caption]

The wheel fit on the axle, but was still unaccountably wobbly. I took about two inches of handlebar, and fit it in over the axle end; it went in about three-quarters of an inch before hitting the first bearing sleeve -- this took all the wobble out of the wheel, but how to fix it in place? Using a heavy chisel, I endeavoured to crimp the tube behind the axle's "bolt head" end.

[caption id="attachment_2736" align="alignnone" width="497"] Step two: Trying to salvage the fix. Call it crimping, or swaging, it means bashing the heck out of the tube with a hammer, and blunt chisel.[/caption]

Fix number two worked for most of the afternoon, but I noticed the wheel was still able to slowly "unscrew" itself from the axle, so I put a hose clamp on the crimped bit of tube to hold the wheel in place -- took about six blocks for the wheel to push the crimped tube off the end of the axle.

[caption id="attachment_2737" align="alignnone" width="497"] Step three: Garnish with hose clamp. Wait for it to fall off, and repeat.[/caption]

I redid the crimped tube -- really tried to put in a deeper crimp. This got me all the way West down Broadway Avenue, from Columbia Street to Granville street-- about 1.2 km, before I could see that the crimped tube had popped off the axle's bold end, but, this time, hadn't actually fallen off. The crimp just wasn't that deep, but I could snap it back over the axle end. Tomorrow, I'll take one more try at deepening the crimp, but it's an aluminium tube, and there's a limit to the abuse it'll take before it just cracks, and crumbles. Click the images to enlarge them.

I borrowed the chisel -- a flat cold chisel for working stone -- Definitely want some of my own. Chisels are like the nuclear option in a toolkit.