The rear wheel does not fit on the stroller. DIY stroller repair

25.10.2019

Everyone knows that for daily walks in the fresh air with a small child you need a stroller. It is quite logical that a baby stroller is used in increased conditions, which often leads to wear and tear on the mechanisms and breakdowns. If a stroller breaks down even for a few days, it can be a serious problem for young parents. Therefore, you have to repair the vehicle immediately and very well, if you don’t have to contact a specialist for this, because Many of the breakdowns of baby strollers can be fixed with your own hands.. In addition, it is important to pay attention to some nuances when choosing a stroller, as well as follow simple rules for operating and storing the mechanism so that the children's vehicle lasts longer without causing problems.

To make the stroller last longer, first of all, even before starting operation, you need to read the instructions, and then follow the requirements specified by the manufacturer. It is important to remember that the maximum permissible load on the stroller should not exceed, on average, 20 kg (manufacturers indicate the maximum weight that a particular model is designed for). Otherwise, the wheel hubs of the vehicle will gradually begin to loosen, which after some time may make the stroller unsafe for transporting a child in it.

To keep your favorite stroller looking like new for as long as possible, it is recommended to use a rain cover during bad weather (it will protect not only the child, but also the fabric parts of the stroller from possible stains). If the fabric does get wet, it must be dried. Following this simple recommendation will help avoid possible deformations of the fabric parts of the stroller.

Typical breakdowns of baby strollers

Among the most common breakdowns of baby strollers are:

– failure of their depreciation system;

– chamber punctures;

– disk failures;

– damage to wheel mounts, retaining rings, axles;

– wear of wheel tires and flaring of bushings (most often occur in cases of over-inflating the chamber, misalignment of the supporting frame of the stroller, or very long use);

– breakdown of the spring folding mechanisms;

– damage to the fastening of the fork, rear beam, crossbar;

– breakdowns of hinges and regulators, mechanisms of changeover handles;

– abrasion and wear of the visor, foam rubber, leatherette on the handle;

– breakage of the visor arches and ratchets;

– failure of brakes, bearings, cables and bushings.

The most common causes of stroller breakdowns

If you systematically lower the stroller down the steps rather than along the “rails” of the ramp, the disk may fail, since the mechanism will be subject to vibrations and uneven loads. Also, in this case, springs, bearings and bushings may be damaged, axles, retaining rings and the shock absorption system may deteriorate.

If the folding mechanism breaks down, the manufacturer is most likely to blame. High-quality models of baby strollers have a reliable design (can be used for up to 5 years).

In addition, the manufacturer can be blamed for problems with the handle's changeover mechanism and its adjustment, or for broken hinges. When choosing a baby stroller, it is mandatory to check the reliability of all components.

One of the most fragile and breakage-prone elements of a stroller for newborns is handle height adjuster, since it is the handle that bears the most intense load when driving a child’s vehicle. Hinges are the most frequently broken part of a baby stroller.. This applies to both cheap and very expensive mechanisms. The cause of the breakdown may be the heavy weight of the mechanism or too aggressive use (for example, rocking a baby in a stroller). Quality, in this case, largely depends on the manufacturer and model of the stroller. If the part is made of low-grade materials (for example, low-quality plastic of the handle itself and screws), then troubles are possible.

The situation is aggravated during the cold season, since due to temperature differences and constant compression and expansion, plastic can become more fragile. That is why experts recommend giving preference to models without hinges, choosing a stroller with solid handle tubes. If adjustment is necessary, then it is better to choose a stroller with the thickest hinges and preferably have metal pads on them. Strollers with sliding handles do not have such problems, but since the handle tubes are hollow, if they bend and adjust them it will be extremely problematic.

There are many types and designs of stroller frames. The less plastic there is in the frame, the more reliable it is. Steel frames are more reliable than aluminum ones, and they weigh about the same! Cross-shaped frames are rightfully considered the most reliable (this design has been used for more than half a century). In the case of twin strollers, a cross-shaped frame is also relevant. The option with pipes sliding along each other is not so reliable, since with a slight bend, assembling or disassembling the stroller will be problematic. Other types of mechanisms with complex folding systems are not always reliable.

Ways to fix common problems with baby strollers

Wheel breakdowns

Tire problems occur most often, but they are also much easier to fix than others.

Malfunctions of baby stroller wheels:

1. Descent;

2. Puncture;

3. Erasing the sleeve;

4. Curvature of the rim.

This kind of breakdown is not a reason to get upset and buy a new stroller. A curved rim can be straightened. But a safer option would be to replace the entire wheel so that the stroller can be controlled better.

The bushing most often wears out due to frequent removal of the wheels. You can find and buy a new one in stores that sell spare parts for strollers (or order from a turner), and replacing the bushing will not be difficult.

As for the stroller wheel, almost anyone can repair it (most men acquired this experience in childhood, I train on bicycle wheels). Sometimes, a flat tire can simply be pumped up with a pump.

If this does not help and the tire continues to deflate, then you need to coat it with soapy foam or put it in water to find the puncture site. Next, you need to take a rubber patch (you can buy it or cut it from an unnecessary piece of rubber), clean it of dirt, degrease it (with acetone or gasoline) and the problem area, and then simply seal it. After the glue has set, the damaged area must be warmed up. The tire can continue to be used approximately 24 hours after repair.

Sometimes it happens that the wheel turns with difficulty, but is not flat. The reason for this may be insufficient lubrication in the bearings or simply accumulated dirt. In the first case, you need to unscrew the wheel cap using a screwdriver and loosen the clutch that holds the bearings. After this, use light, precise blows to remove the wheel from the hub. You can clean the bearings with an aggressive lubricant, which will remove dirt without any problems. Next, you need to apply regular lubricant to them.

If the wheel is broken and cannot be repaired, it must be replaced with a new one. Some stroller models come with spare wheels. If you don’t have a spare tire, you can contact the retail outlet where you purchased the stroller (often they have the necessary spare parts on sale).

The stroller is pulled to the side

Sometimes it happens that the stroller begins to “drive” to the side. There are several reasons for this behavior of a children's vehicle. The problem may occur due to uneven air pressure in the wheels. Or it may happen that the axles on which the wheels are mounted are not parallel to each other. This problem can be identified by measuring the distance between the front and rear wheels on each side of the stroller. If the values are different, the axes are not parallel. Owners of four-wheeled strollers quite often encounter such defects.

But even such a nuisance, in some cases, can be corrected on your own. To begin with, you need to carefully examine the stroller in order to find out which of the axles (front or rear) are located less evenly relative to the stroller body. On the side of the stroller where the distance between the wheels is smaller, you need to unscrew the screw and nut connecting the front pillar to the frame on which the mesh basket is attached (almost every stroller has one). After this, you need to find a position for the front pillar at which the wheel axes become parallel (when the distances between the front and rear wheels of the stroller on both its left and right sides become the same). Next, you need to mark the new position of the hole in the rack relative to the frame and drill it into the frame. After this, all that remains is to secure the front pillar and frame in the new position using a screw and nut.

Many other parts of a baby stroller can be repaired in the same way. Damaged or broken metal elements are not difficult to weld or replace by selecting a tube of suitable diameter. If a plastic part breaks, it can be restored using epoxy glue and fiberglass (to be sure, it is better to apply several layers at once).

Useful tips on how to avoid stroller breakdowns:

– it is necessary to regularly lubricate and clean the bushings and wheel axles (this will significantly extend their service life);

– in cases with strollers with sliding frames, after a walk you need to wipe the moving tubes (otherwise they will be scratched and may jam due to dirt getting between them);

– you should not use the stroller handle as a lever when overcoming obstacles, especially if the handle is adjustable;

– before starting to operate a children's vehicle, carefully understand its design and test its mechanisms. If you trust someone to take your baby for a walk in a stroller, tell them in detail the rules of use (it’s easier to show where to press and what to pull than to repair the stroller later).

In conclusion, I would like to recommend that, if possible, you carefully check the functionality of all components and mechanisms of a baby stroller before purchasing. But if the defect has already appeared at home or the trouble occurred during operation, there is no need to be upset, since sometimes it is quite possible to fix the breakdown yourself with a little effort.

How to remove a wheel from a stroller?

It would seem that you don’t need much intelligence to remove a wheel from a baby stroller. After all, it seems much easier than removing the wheel from the car.

However, in reality everything is not so simple. Therefore, in this article we will look at how to remove a wheel from a stroller and what needs to be taken into account.

Removing the wheel from the stroller

A baby stroller has wheels that are usually made of plastic, although there are also some that are equipped with inflatable wheels with a metal rim. However, this does not have any significance for dismantling.

First you need to lift the brake lever up.
Now you need to press the lock, which is located on the wheel hub, all the way. After this, pull the ring to the side; you may need to swing it.
The latch should be pulled out, not pulled out. Otherwise you may break it.
You can also use a simpler method if you purchased strollers from German and Italian manufacturers. They are usually equipped with wheels with a special button, by pressing which you can easily remove the wheel.
To return the wheel, you just need to put it on and press until it clicks.
Wheel removal may be necessary in various cases, including for chassis maintenance. By the way, it is recommended to do it regularly. To do this, it is enough to lubricate the bushings with technical grease, however, if your strollers are equipped with a ball bearing, you will not need to lubricate them. But you will have to clean it from dirt. Therefore, wheels should be removed regularly to check the condition of the axles and bushings.

If you don’t know which stroller is best to choose, we recommend reading the article

When treated with care, baby strollers last a long time and are passed on from one family to another many times. A small child has to be walked regularly at all times of the year in any weather, overcoming bumps in the roads and obstacles. Young parents don’t always get around to lubricating the wheel bearings periodically, so due to wear and tear on the wheel bushings, they break over time.

The stroller becomes stiff and moves to the side when rolling. And if the locking ring holding the wheel is broken, it constantly falls off the axle while driving and it becomes impossible to walk the child. You can buy new wheels and lock washers as spare parts, but saving your family budget you can repair them yourself.

Repair of baby stroller wheels

To seat wheels on axles in strollers, two types of bearings are used: sliding and rolling. Sliding bearings are cheap, so they are often used. In rolling bearings, sliding occurs due to the rolling of balls in a cage. These are expensive bearings and therefore are used only in high-quality branded stroller models.

When properly lubricated, rolling bearings last almost until the entire structure of the stroller is completely worn out. If such a bearing breaks, it is easy to replace it with a new one. A worn sliding bearing cannot be replaced; usually the entire wheel is replaced. But if you wish, you can restore the sliding bearing with your own hands, which is demonstrated in the article using the example of restoring the wheels of the Korean COZY stroller.

How to remove wheels from baby stroller axles

The wheels on the axles in a baby stroller are usually secured using starlock lock washers or their equivalents.

The lock washer and the bearing are usually covered with a decorative cover, which, in addition to its aesthetic appearance, serves the function of protecting the bearing from dirt and water getting into it.

In order to remove the cover from the wheel, you need to press the latches one by one from the inside of the wheel using a screwdriver blade, as shown in the photo. There are two of them in this wheel cover.

The stopper on the axle turned out to be plastic, consisting of two parts. One is for fixing, and the second is for securing the latch. As the use of the stroller has shown, the plastic latches often break; before this I had to notice that they were metal on three wheels.

Restoration of wheel bearings

Before repairing wheels, they must be thoroughly washed from dirt and grease residues using a brush and detergent. Laundry soap or washing powder will do.

To completely remove dirt from the hole in the wheel and make its surface rough, you need to go around its entire circumference with a round file. If there is no such file, then you can wrap a rod of suitable diameter made of wood or other material with sandpaper and thus process the surface.

Next, from the tube, the inner diameter of which will fit freely on the stroller axle, it is necessary to cut bushings with a length equal to the length of the hole in the wheel. A brass tube is best, but if you don’t have one, you can make one from steel. I made the bushings from the elbow of a broken brass telescopic radio antenna, sawing it using a jigsaw with a metal saw installed in it.

The manufactured bushings, placed on the stroller axles, rotated easily. The gap did not exceed one millimeter.

To ensure good adhesion of the surface of the bushings with epoxy resin, their surface was treated with a coarsely cut file. To fix the bushings during processing, they were held using pliers.

The bearing holes in the wheels had large conical wear. Therefore, the bushings, made of a thin-walled tube, were not fixed when installed in them. If it is impossible to insert the bushing into the wheel hole due to the large thickness of its walls, the hole must be bored out. If you have a soldering iron of sufficient power, then you don’t have to bore the hole, but press in the bushing by heating it to the melting temperature of the wheel plastic.

The bushings were fixed in the wheel holes using thermoplastic silicone, which also prevented the epoxy resin from leaking out when pouring it. Silicone was applied by melting with a soldering iron from the side of the hole with a minimum diameter.

The gap between the hub and the hole in the wheel is best filled with epoxy resin using a medical syringe. The resin must be applied slowly so that it has time to displace air from the gap and penetrate to its entire depth.

The presented photo shows what the wheel looks like after filling the gap between the hub and the wheel hole with epoxy resin. If a little glue gets inside the bushing during application, it can be removed after hardening using a file or sandpaper.

To increase the strength of the restored bearing, after pouring epoxy resin, a flat metal washer was additionally installed in each wheel. All wheels have been repaired and in a day, when the resin has completely hardened, they can be installed on a baby stroller.

While repairing the wheels, it was discovered that one of them had a rubber tire that was freely rotating around its base. Obviously, due to the tight rotation of the bearing, the rubber ring rotated and, as a result, was worn out from the inside. This defect was eliminated by filling the resulting gap with silicone. It is worth noting that silicone hardens in depth at a rate of about 2 mm per day. Therefore, if the gap depth is large, it is necessary not to use the stroller for a couple of days after the repair.

How to attach wheels to the axles of a baby stroller

Since three of the four plastic wheel holders broke and were lost, we had to think in advance about how to secure the wheels to the axles. It was decided to secure the double wheels with studs, and the single wheel with a homemade split washer.

There was no groove on one axle, and on the second it was barely noticeable. Therefore, holes with a diameter of about 1.5 mm were drilled in the axles where the groove passes.

Before each wheel was placed on the axle, the inner bore and the surface of the axle were generously coated with graphite lubricant. Thick lubricants are usually used to lubricate low-speed plain bearings. Among them are Litol-24, Filol-3, LSC-15 and the like. Car enthusiasts know these lubricants well.

To reduce wear on the side surfaces of the bearings and prevent dirt from penetrating into them from all sides of the wheels, metal flat washers were installed. If suitable size washers are not available, you can mount the wheels without them.

After installing the wheel on the axle, it must be secured with a stud. A postal nail was used as a pin. To be able to insert the nail into the hole in the stroller axle, it had to be slightly bent in an arc.

Since the length of the nail was longer than required, part of it from the head side was bitten off using side cutters. This operation can be performed before installing the nail on the axle. Instead of a nail, you can use steel wire or a piece of a large paper clip.

Next, the protruding ends of the nail from the axle need to be bent at right angles in different directions using pliers. One of the bends can also be done in advance. All that remains is to install the decorative cover in place. If the cover is lost, the bearings will need to be lubricated more often.

The axles of the single wheels of the stroller had deep grooves and drilling holes in them could lead to weakening of the axles. Therefore, it was decided to make the clamps from an ordinary flat metal washer.

The washer was bored from the inside so that its width was about 2 mm, and its diameter was equal to the diameter of the axle. To make it possible to fit the washer into the groove of the axle, a part a couple of millimeters wide was removed from it, as shown in the photo.

After applying lubricant to the axle and seating the wheel, the washer was put on to the level of the groove. Next, the washer was compressed using pliers until the ends met, as in the photo.

Do-it-yourself repair of the wheels of a baby stroller has been successfully completed and you can go for a walk with your child. Installing metal bushings in the bearings greatly increased the service life of the wheels. An unpleasant squeak that appears when the stroller is rolled will indicate that it is time to lubricate them.

According to the young mother, after the wheels were repaired, the stroller began to roll easily, straight and even better than when it was new.