Oooh, shiny!

[davidgillon]

I've been meaning to sort out the slightly undersized Quickie GPV I ended up getting for free after last year's eBay wheelchair fiasco (first they ruled the other person was right and paid them, then revised that to me being right and refunded me). It's not so small as to be unusable, just a touch narrow if you're wearing any sort of jacket. It might be useful to have a spare chair I don't mind getting bashed about. The main thing that needed taking care of is that the caster tyres were so worn they were in imminent danger of tearing across the width and peeling right off. So I looked up caster prices. How much!?! £45 a pair is the cheaper end of the spectrum! You can get a cheap transit chair for only a fiver more! That was rather more than I wanted to pay, so I've been watching eBay.

And this week one of the mobility dealers offered a very slightly used pair for £25. That's more like it, and it turns out they are very slightly used - they still have the mould mark down the centre of the tyre, so if they've been used outdoors it can't have been for long. Only one minor drawback, they're got built-in self-powered LEDs that flash as they spin. Oooh, shiny!

I've fitted them, which took a bit of delving about for every spare washer in the house as they're 1" width and my caster forks are 2.5", but it looks like I've got a functional result (I'm too cheap to buy proper spacers if I don't need to). I'll give it a try tomorrow to check they roll okay - I'm actually not worried whether they flash or not, I'd almost prefer they didn't., but for £25 I'll take what I get!