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The tuba has been going to school nearly every day this school year, in a SKB hard case. Now one of the wheels on that case is failing (bearing shot). Spare wheels are available from SKB, and I bet they use the same bearings as skateboards, so fixing this should be easy.

Except that the wheel and its plastic case are riveted into the case. And I can't get to the inside of the rivets, because of the padded interior. Sure, I could grind of the outside of the rivets, and then use a rivet gun to put it back together, but then there would be loose metal bits floating around underneath the padding, and it would be cheesy.

The padding is glued into the inside of the case, right? Is there a trick to removing the padding, and re-gluing it? I was thinking using a flexible long knife, and try to carefully separate it from the wall, and then re-glue with spray glue.

Or is there some other magic trick to getting the wheels out? The only thing I could find on the interwebs was a video for a case that has no padding, where it was trivial to grind off the rivets from inside.

Can you drill the rivits out (from the outside) and replace with pop-rivits when you put it back together?
I have not looked closely at the newer SKB cases, so I am just guessing. Not a lot of good pictures around, but if it is like this it shouldn't be too hard. If all of the loose bits of the old rivits would be underneath the interior foam it would not be a big problem, IMO.

ralphbsz wrote:I bet they use the same bearings as skateboards, so fixing this should be easy.

Except that the wheel and its plastic case are riveted into the case. And I can't get to the inside of the rivets, because of the padded interior.

Do they look like this model? You are right, they use rollerblade wheels (which IMHO are very cheap) You would think that on a
tuba case costing approx. $500 that they would use something of a little better quality for the wheels
If the padding IS securely glued down in that area, I really wouldn't worry about a few tiny rivet heads being left in that area.
If they were smart (knowing that these el cheapo wheels/bearings will eventually need to be replaced) they should have used
a threaded bolt for the wheel axle (with a torx or allen head & have it thread into a nut attached (fixed) to the inner side of the wheel housing (casing) with a bit of locktite on the threads.

Yes, that's the model. I think I'll get the whole wheel assembly from SKB as a spare part (they're super easy to get parts from), but then before I re-install it, modify it to have a removable axle, since this will probably keep happening. And then I'll install it by grinding off the the rivets on the outside, cutting them off as short as possible, and leaving the inside hidden behind the padding (which is very solidly glued in). Thanks for the advice!