I am located in North Texas, but frequent the South Texas coast often. I was looking for ideas to build a launching device for a jetski on the beach, and ran into PKF. I now think I want to make a buggy and a ski launcher, as I love DIY, projects, and building new toys. The only issue is I don't understand wheels, tires, and bearings, and I don't have infinite funds.

After digging around hard on the internet I found tires from Carlisle, Kedra, Nanco, and Peter Lynn. I believe I need bigfoot or smooth type tires, but I don't understand how to mount wheels on em, if the tires need tubes, and how to find the right shaft/bearings?

Someone mentioned 4 x 8 wheels and 3/4 in or 20mm bearings. Where do you buy these things those? What about the shafts/axle? Any economical options? Craigslist? eBay? eCommerce webstore? Hardware store? I am lost!!

Much Thanks!!

Welcome to PKF. Any of the tires you mention will do well with a buggy build or the jet ski launcher. For your jet ski launcher, I would try to find go cart rims or something similar and keep things in standard form. For a buggy, 20mm is a very common size due to most of our products coming from over seas. You can get the Carlisle, narco, and some other 21x12x8 tires online, you just have to shop around. I believe the Nancos are usually the cheaper route going for as little as $35 a tire. Rims can be a broad range in price depending on what you find.

For a buggy, I would recommend the Peter Lynn Bigfoot lites which can usually be ordered through several of the shops on this site, like ours.

If you would like to chat, give me a call, love to talk about any of the things you mention here.

What about a jetski launcher that's also a buggy. That would make an interesting project.
also take a look here for ideas. > cadkat.com.

See this page for the info on wheels/tires/bearings and also the video on making a back axle: http://popeyethewelder.com/popeyethewelder/building-kite-bug...

WOW! Incredible responses. I have some work to do. I now have the axle and the bearings figured out. The only part I am stuck on is determining what type of wheel size fits what type of tire size, and whether they need tubes or not. I am not savvy when it comes to wheel and tire mounting. Thoughts??

Most kite buggy's use 8" rims. Typical tyre sizes for these rims are 21x12-8, 16x6.5-8 etc.
The number on the end refers to the rim size. The other numbers are less important.

eg...21x12-8...(21) is the height of the tyre...(12) is the width of the tyre and (8) is the big hole in the middle for your 8" rim.
You can use tubes if you like but tubeless is quite common.

If you order the plastic wheels; you can run any tubeless tires tubeless: http://www.awindofchange.com/category/kite_buggy_parts.html

(From what I've read; a tubeless tire can be run with or without a tube and a tube style tire needs a tube due to not having the butyl liner in the tire and the air leaking through)

I have the need to bring a wheel chair to the waters edge across the soft sand. Lot of stuff on the market but nothing that really fit my needs (Ezwheel too much $). I bought 2 bugs just for the axles and put a couple of bars and a platform between them to hold the wheelchair. All done for less money and effort than any other way. I may still have to find more floaty tires we will see…oh yea in under 5 min I could put them back as bugs so there’s that too. Totally disarmed the wife for multiple bug purchases with this approach as well.