The wheels are on, and off and on and .......

The plan was to leave the cart alone for a while and do some yard work but when I got home I found the wheels had arrived and, well you know how it is. I guess that the front wheels had not been removed for decades as the nuts were cold welded on, in fact they were so tight that the cart moved as I tried to spin them off. Still all's well that ends and I finally got to this stage.

Now I am looking at the cart thinking that something is not quite right but I can't put my finger on it. Then I pushed the cart back and it wouldn't move. One of the front wheel was locked up. I

looked closer and discovered the wheel was fouling on the track rod end WTF! How can this be? (If you want to play detective click the image above and see if you can spot the issue). Then I notice that it was in fact the valve hitting the steering and brilliantly deduced that I had put the wheel on inside out. Mistake number 1.

So with the wheels on I stepped back to bask in my overt manliness and to my chagrin I saw that the tread patterns were slightly different. Then I noticed that there were directional arrows on the tires. Can you guess how many wheels were on backwards? Tout alors et merde as we say in German. Mistake number two.

So now I am at this stage and I think we can all agree that it looks quite magnificent, yes? So I decide to offer the front end up and discover that the body has different clearances to the chassis and there is no way on God's earth that it is going to fit around these fat boy tires. Mistake number three.

As it happens this is not the end of the world. A 4 inch lift kit will make my problems go away and I was toying with the idea anyway so this is just a nudge in the right direction. Still all in all I should have stuck to the yard work.