How much for a front caster?

[wheelie junkie]

I let one of my support workers try and replace an inner tube on my front caster. Split rim, 5 securing bolts and whilst putting back together he overtightened a bolt snapping the plastic where the bolt sat. For Caster now held together with 4 bolts not 5.

I contacted Ottobock for a new front caster and was quoted £63 for it! I just can't work out where they get that price from for 2 pieces of plastic, I'm definitely in the wrong business.

[ICEUK]

4 bolts will be sufficient, maybe add a drop of loctite but i wouldnt replace it. All disability products are so over priced that we get rip off everytime.

[Burgerman]

Because they can. Because of a lack of proper free marketforces.

[ex-Gooserider]

If you have a few numbers, it may be possible to source a different caster entirely....

1. Tire size - especially the ID of the rim....
2. WIDTH of the caster both where the tire goes, and at the hub where the axle goes through (more properly the distance between the outer faces of the bearings)
3. The bearing size, especially the ID.

If you look on eBay and so on, you may find one that has the same specs. (also look at used parts to see if you can find a decent used one)

If you have machining skills or access to someone with them, it is often fairly straightforward to make different spacers so that a caster of different size than the original will fit - detail varies depending on what is different....

However I agree with ICEUK that 4 bolts will probably be fine...

ex-Gooserider

[rickystyx]

There are two on ebay for £50 if it helps - nothing to do with me I must add

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Otto-bock-B4 ... SwQVddcQib

[Burgerman]

Heres one

Shows all the out of control probleMs that stock chairs have.

1. control pod wobbles around all over, and too low to properly hold.
2. programming terrible, he cant steer it straight on the bridge/ramp or get through a doorway without crashing. Or contro it roperly in / out of lift. And this is the stuff they did not edit out...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fySEgiAngv0

Real reason for posting. Casters look different?

[wheelie junkie]

Slightly different caster to the Juvo

[Burgerman]

Yes. But does that matter?

[steves1977uk]

That's a typical marketing video, how on earth do powerchair companies expect users to control it accurately without crashing into walls??? All that video does is shows you how bad it steers!

Steve

[rickystyx]

Sorry - I thought you also had the 400 - I like these castors as I could put the 3.00 x 4 tyres on them and they fitted the forks wiithout any mods but if yours are different you might need to keep looking.
I must say that chair in the video must be really badly set up - my joystick is at the right level and nice and firm and having reprogrammed it I'm really happy with it.
I've just bought a 90A controller for it to try to give just a little better hill climbing ability - I can rewire it if need be but it already has the 4pole motors so here's hoping

[Burgerman]

No the vid is heavily edited. Those are the bits that they CHOOSE to post. God knows what the rest was like. Well actually I do know. I see it every time I watch other users, and every time I buy or try a chair. Non of them are usable or safe.

It wouldnt bother me. Other than the fact that they go out of their way to STOP us fixing it so it is usable. They wont do it. And they refuse to sell the programming tools needed to us either. And try to make it more difficult year on year. Yet we are supposed to live with it this way. I just cant!

[rickystyx]

if you have dammaged the castor then check your house insurance - it may cover the replacement for you but the excess may be more.
just a thought

[wheelie junkie]

if you have dammaged the castor then check your house insurance - it may cover the replacement for you but the excess may be more.
just a thought

Flooded 3x in last 15 years each claim was over £125k, my insurer would think that I was taking the p'ss. I can afford to buy it but the principle of being ripped off means I won't buy it. Even bigger laugh, slider bracket for my chin control, 2 bits of aluminium, 3 bolts and a £170 price tag!

[Burgerman]

If I was an insurer I may look to heavily loading premiums to the point where they were unafordable to properties that have claimed on a flood more than once. From a business point of view it makes no sense to cover such properties unless at say 1/5th of the value of the property if its flooded 2 times in a decade. For e.g. So beware the future. To cover you and not have to load the premiums for all, is impossible. And so that means higher prices, less business etc. So they *will* start to try and lose properties that flood one way or another.

Get away from there. Even at a large loss. Because it will be a bigger loss when it happens again and you couldnt get cover...

[wheelie junkie]

Government introduced a reinsurance scheme with all the insurers taking part guaranteeing flood insurance, Flood Re. I estimable we have had £400k in claims and our excess has not changed it is still £50. Already it is almost impossible to sell and even if we did we'd need every bit of savings to find a similar house. And just to make it worse if I used my pension fund I'd get hit for 40% tax, if I dies my wife gets it tax free and can afford a decent house without needing to sell this one. Flood re can't be used for properties you rent out so not selling and renting out to finance a new house don't work and me self employed with obvious problem that I can't guarantee to work puts any mortgage lender off.

Environment Agency might find a way to protect us but will probably take years to get the funding.

[Burgerman]

Government introduced a reinsurance scheme with all the insurers taking part guaranteeing flood insurance, Flood Re. I estimable we have had £400k in claims and our excess has not changed it is still £50.

And your

Environment Agency might find a way to protect us but will probably take years to get the funding.

Is all tax payers money throwing good money after bad and so dragging down the economy. Fortunately for you personsally. But think about it, why should others that had the sense to build or buy a house in a safe area be made to pay for the bad choices made by others? Thats socialism again.

[wheelie junkie]

When you buy a house in a location that has never flooded all you can use is history. If it was on the river bank you might think about it but we are set back. Whether you agree on the cause or not climate change is happening and rainfall patterns changing, throw in more construction on flood plains, flood defences for bigger cities and towns and water levels alter. Highly unlikely you can predict that and the impact on a property. More and more people will end up in situations like ours some because of housing built on flood plains some because the river system can't cope with heavier rainfall.

We already have a housing shortage, not putting flood defences in would have a big impact and increase demand crazy when you have an option to protect. EA have already acknowledged that the cost of protecting the part of the village we live would cost too much for the number of properties protected so we just have to do what we can, flood wall around house, flood gates, sump pumps ,backflow valves etc pointless really as water always finds a way in.

[flagman1776]

One idea that is sometimes done around here is to raise the house UP. There are companies which move buildings... this is just the same except the move is only vertical. Sometimes only pillars are used or break away walls are desirable in coastal locations or just unfinished spaces. I know this is not mobility friendly. It is an option though.

PS Buy a boat.

[greybeard]

In 31 days time, when we exit the EU and are free from its more ridiculous edicts like banning us from dredging our own rivers and using the waste to build up the river banks as we've done for centuries, hence causing a great deal of flooding, we will once again be able to dredge our rivers and return rain water to more natural levels.

[wheelie junkie]

Raising would be an expensive option, semi detached, sandstone property. One of the houses close to us raised a bungalow. Sadly can't afford to do it without taking a big tax hit on my pension pot and leaving me broke

Leaving the EU will make no difference we already can and do dredge, I think £21m was spent be EA on dredging and have a policy to do so https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/committed-dr ... gency-boss more lies from UKIP/Leave that the EU are to blame.

There is no fix for us, rainfall change into a complex river system with catchment covering high Pennines and high Lakeland fells which get unusually high days of rainfall, everything that goes into Ullswater comes out past or through our house, the lake would need to be a few metres deeper if not more and that would just store more getting it down the Eden and into the Solway would require extensive dredging.

Preparing to be moved tonight if the rain is as bad as forecast, a night or 2 in my local hospital place of safety, it'll be the 4th time this year as I have to be moved early

[greybeard]

Dredging without using the spoil to raise the banks achieves little. But such use of the dredged spoil is specifically forbidden by the EU who ludicrously claim the spoil must be treated as toxic waste. Not a lie by anybody. And it is wholely the fault of the EU.

[Burgerman]

Well I took the time to look on the ordinance survey maps, and the flood plane maps, and so on. Having already decided that higher ground is going to be less of a problem, living near the coast. Most of this town is a good few meters above sea level, and we have a good sea wall running 2 miles up/down the coast. Theres still areas where it makes no sense to buy a house, on reclaimed land, and lower localised areas. So if people had any sense and they do not, they wouldnt have built there, and or bought those houses. But they dont. And they think that 50 or 100 years is "history"... Its not. 10k years is enough history to be reasonably confident. But living on higher ground than your neibours is better than history. Why would you buy a house that is liable to flood, unless you accept that, and its reflected in the price? And then, why is it the taxpayers problem if people do this. And yes, climate has always changed. Thats why short term history is pointless.

[flagman1776]

The marina I worked at was almost all reclaimed land, filled to the level of the abutting roadway. In the nearly 20 years I worked there we never had a storm surge that threatened the protective stone rip-rap. But we were 3 miles up an inland waterway from the ocean. We had to watch rain input but also storm surge from the ocean and tidal effects.
One problem I encountered while camping on a flood plain for a river... we were forced to bug out a couple of times. We were camped within sight of a flood control dam to protect the down stream city. Upon researching, I found the dam held back drainage from 144 square miles. So a major storm might dump several inches of water into the water shed. In the next day or 2, the water level behind the dam rose swiftly... on the order of a ten foot rise in the water level.
This same thing can happen without a dam... someplace the water has a small channel to get out.

[ex-Gooserider]

Even bigger laugh, slider bracket for my chin control, 2 bits of aluminium, 3 bolts and a £170 price tag!

IMG_2636.jpg

Mixed bag - Seems like a rip-off price at first look, BUT......

How many of those do they sell? design and fixturing costs need to be amortized over many units before they become low... I have no idea of their market size, but given that it's a specialty control, I'd suspect not very many units...

If you have thousands in design and fixture costs before you make a single part, that needs to be recovered. If you are making 100,000 parts, that cost goes down to pennies per part, but if you are only making 100 you have a higher cost per part.... The shop will also have a (high) cost for just setting up to run the part - which basically is the same whether it's for one part or one million....

Looking at that slider unit - I see several hours of CAD design for the actual part, followed by at least as long to design the jig-fixtures needed to hold the part for machining... G-code for the process wouldn't be horrible but I see at least 3-4 tool changes, and possibly a couple of setup changes - the result is a CNC cycle time that is fairly long for each part. Follow by finishing steps, including the anodizing and I'd expect a relatively high manufacturing cost per part... Add in the share of design and fixture costs per part, and it gets even higher....

Then you add in the costs for all the hands the part passes through - even just doing direct sales the standard advice is to charge 3X the manufacturing cost at a minimum....

Bottom line it starts seeming less outrageous when figuring in whats behind that 'simple' part...

ex-Gooserider

[wheelie junkie]

Dredging without using the spoil to raise the banks achieves little. But such use of the dredged spoil is specifically forbidden by the EU who ludicrously claim the spoil must be treated as toxic waste. Not a lie by anybody. And it is wholely the fault of the EU.

Incorrect again, it is only prevented if the dredge contains toxic material not that the all spoil is toxic.

Mixed bag - Seems like a rip-off price at first look, BUT......

I've worked in manufacturing for the last 30 years and understand the costs, design, tooling fixtures aren't cheap but I am pretty sure that I can get a one off made for less and even allowing for a reasonable margin on a low volume run could get the retail price down. For a part like that it would probably be cheaper to 3d print individually rather make a small batch and keep in stock. For low volume parts like this probably made in Germany you could have your distributor set up with a 3d printer and just send the file and let them do it, no stock, no international shipping. Another sign that the disability industry isn't looking at alternative ways because they don't have to, it is not a free market

So if people had any sense and they do not, they wouldnt have built there, and or bought those houses.

I've spent 15 years fighting a local developer who has been trying to build 30 houses on the land that is adjacent to us and the river flows through when it breaks its banks, local council planning committee passed his plans even after 2 floods! Finally managed to stop it with EA putting restrictive conditions in, even then he was fighting to get around them. Council were so desperate to find land to build on to hit their target. Those houses were meant to be low cost and go to a housing association. Madness but this is how the house building system works.

I suppose that I could move to the top of a hill but I would then be complaining that I couldn't get out and my carers couldn't get to me when it snows, which it does quite a lot here. No one can predict future weather and if you want to go back far enough a large glacier ripped up the valley where the lake is and created the land my house is on but the threat of another glacier is low on the risk scale. When we bought climate change wasn't considered, over the last 20+ years it has changed. As last night shows more of the UK is being affected 80 flood warnings and 180 flood alerts. Places like where I live will not get flood defences, EA only do major projects where large number of houses can be saved, Carlisle for example where it could be 1000 properties. Call it socialism if you want but I have no problem with the tax I pay being used for it.

It is only going to get worse and we are too late to be able to change it, insurers will be raising premiums to handle the increased claims.

[Burgerman]

I've spent 15 years fighting a local developer who has been trying to build 30 houses on the land that is adjacent to us and the river flows through when it breaks its banks, local council planning committee passed his plans even after 2 floods! Finally managed to stop it with EA putting restrictive conditions in, even then he was fighting to get around them. Council were so desperate to find land to build on to hit their target. Those houses were meant to be low cost and go to a housing association. Madness but this is how the house building system works.

Well they dont IQ test the sort of numpties that the people vote into power And I really think they should. Or you get what we see in parliment, local authorities etc.

I suppose that I could move to the top of a hill but I would then be complaining that I couldn't get out and my carers couldn't get to me when it snows, which it does quite a lot here.

You dont need to move up a hill. You just need to move to a bit of ground thats say 20 feet higher than now. And buy a boat. That may not even mean a gradual slope. In my town theres areas that are anything from below sea level on reclaimed land, and on areas that were at leasy 5 or 6 metres above the high sea levels. And you only need go a mile. No "hills" around here. Just gentle slopes. Lincolnshire is basically flat.

No one can predict future weather and if you want to go back far enough a large glacier ripped up the valley where the lake is and created the land my house is on but the threat of another glacier is low on the risk scale.

Rubbish, its garanteed. We are currently in one of the very breif warm pperiods. Most of this planets history is miles deep in ice and cold. Where life was limited to the equator and a few miles either side. During these warm periods life spreads as far as we see today, and beyond towards the poles. Why do you think theres masses of coal, oil, gas up in the sea beyond scotland and much further north around the globe?

When we bought climate change wasn't considered, over the last 20+ years it has changed.

You are joking right?
Climate has ALWAYS changed. The problem is that like all these idiot warmists, they only ever look at a tiny span of time.
www.wheelchairdriver.com/warming.pdf

As last night shows more of the UK is being affected 80 flood warnings and 180 flood alerts. Places like where I live will not get flood defences, EA only do major projects where large number of houses can be saved, Carlisle for example where it could be 1000 properties. Call it socialism if you want but I have no problem with the tax I pay being used for it.

There is not more floods than in the past. At least theres no sigificant differences other than the way that the rivers and flood areas are managed and that we have built more houses in stupid places. And of course he fact that you are only considering 0.00001 of the planets history. What we see today is not unusual and not unexpected.

It is only going to get worse and we are too late to be able to change it, insurers will be raising premiums to handle the increased claims.

Its already much better than the past. Not worse! Your house would be under a mile of ice. You are trying to equate the daft global warming religion to reality based on a fraction of a fraction of the ost recent few years instead of millions and billions of actual climate history. What is happening today is a tiny blip in the schee of things. And not unexpected.

[wheelie junkie]

You'd never build anything if you consider the long term future and man has always built and moved leaving empty dwellings because of change whether climate or just exhausting a natural resource, that is short term but we do it. You only need to consider change in your own lifetime so there is no need to think about glaciers but there is a reason to consider rising temperature and sea levels, cause doesn't matter we just need to consider it and the impact. We've caused our own problems, flood defences around a big city mean the water has to be somewhere, probably held upstream causing a flood risk to more properties. Looking at river levels in the rivers around us I'm convinced that the addition of flood defences to Carlisle have raised levels upstream and they drain more slowly after a flood. Man creating more problems that get blamed on climate change. Looking at some river levels over the year they are lower than in the past but have short periods where they are a lot higher and we will have to adapt to this change as our reservoir system ceases to cope and we have water shortages in summer and flooding over winter. Build more reservoirs to hold the exceptional rainfall and supply our water needs

[Irving]

I recently had house insurance quote go up by 50% because of 'flood risk'. Yet I am 74m ASL! The insurer in question had decided to narrow its risk criteria to 100m squares and using the EA flood risk database apparently there is a 100 year run off risk from the hill 1km to the north which has a potential run-off through the house opposite and through my next door neighbours property. Well i'm 0.5m at least above them! Fortunately other insurers are more (or less?) enlightened.

BTW as I type there's the mother of all thunderstorms and apocalyptic rain happening outside!

[Burgerman]

Sunny here. Most but not all of the areas that flood see to be on the west of the country. Usually to do with a mix of the remnants of storms and things that have allways traditionally hit the US or close to it first before losing strength as they come across to us...

[wheelie junkie]

I recently had house insurance quote go up by 50% because of 'flood risk'. Yet I am 74m ASL! The insurer in question had decided to narrow its risk criteria to 100m squares and using the EA flood risk database apparently there is a 100 year run off risk from the hill 1km to the north which has a potential run-off through the house opposite and through my next door neighbours property. Well i'm 0.5m at least above them! Fortunately other insurers are more (or less?) enlightened.

BTW as I type there's the mother of all thunderstorms and apocalyptic rain happening outside!

We would have problems moving insurer but luckily continue on with no increase in premium because of Flood re, we are screwed if they stop that. EA flood risk database is quite accurate and I envisage more properties having higher quotes as they look at things almost to individual house level. Definitely worth checking before you purchase a house. We were a once in 100 year risk, now 3 times in 15 years, reality not a theoretical risk.

Dry here, river level dropping but lake not, water run off from fells takes a while but no rain and a sunny day forecast so hopefully will reduce before we get more rain.