The TLC of wheelchair maintenance

A little TLC can go a long way with a wheelchair. You can’t expect your wheelchair to keep up with you if you don’t treat it right and maintain good wheelchair maintenance. Just like a shiny sports car, you need to go all out with how you treat your four wheels. If you do, it’ll love you back. From regularly maintaining your casters to one of the coolest wheelchair wash days ever, check out these three videos that emulate our point to a tee.

Our first video comes from Blaze Sports, and if you use a manual wheelchair, you simply must watch this. The video features a rock star technician from Blaze Sports (an adapted sports organization for kids and adults with disabilities) and he goes over basic caster-care 101 (the two small front wheels) for wheelchair maintenance.

He talks about the importance of cleaning your casters twice a week in order to keep them in tip-top shape. He shows the slick process of removing the bolt (and spacers) so you can remove nasty things like string and hair (which can totally slow you down). Then he wipes off the bearings, cleans the spacers and puts it all back together (and holy cow do they spin MUCH better). Watch the video

Our second video is a great how-to from Sam Russell, a paraplegic, and he shows how to change the tube on a pneumatic wheelchair tire. He goes over the tools you’ll need (two tire levers and an inflation tool) and deflates his old tire. Next, he uses a tire lever to pull the old tube away from the wheel. Once it’s off, he removes the old tube and inserts the new one (inflating it first to check for leaks). Watch his thorough how-to

And our third video shows one of the awesome wheelchair wash days that happens at hospitals around the country. In this video from UMCP Rehabilitation Institute (a great hospital at the University of Pittsburgh), watch their annual “Wheelchair Wash & Tune-Up” day, where local wheelers are invited to come and give their chairs a badly needed once, over free of charge (and extending the life of their chairs in the process). Polishing, shining-up and minor repairs are all done (love this, need this! lol). Watch this beautiful day in action

Just like your mom used to tell you when you were a kid – your wheelchair won’t get clean by itself. It’s up to you! By keeping your wheelchair clean, maintaining the most important parts and knowing how often to do it, your spendy four wheels are guaranteed to be around for the long run.

What kind of wheelchair maintenance do you do? Have any wheelchair cleaning tricks?

Watch the wheelchair maintenance videos!

– How to take care of casters on a manual chair (from Blaze Sports)

– How to change tubes on manual wheelchair tires

– Wheelchair wash and tune-up day at UMPC Mercy