A little update on the cush rubber experiments.
This is a picture of the Gale Speed universal cush rubbers I ordered from Japan.
Unfortunately, they don't fit. They are a little too large on the OD, and with the metal sleeve removed they would still be too small on the ID. I could probably make them fit by skimming the OD slightly and using normal 10 mm socket head bolts in place of the stock ones (they have the correct head OD to fit the metal bushings), but that would be more work than just making replacements. I also noticed that they are made of a much harder material, more like Shore 95A than 80A.
Next up is making new rubbers from tube stock. This is a picture of a 6" tube of Shore 80A polyurethane rubber, with the rubber I made next to it. The steel bar in the tube is to keep it round in the lathe chuck.
This is a picture of the new rubber next to an original in the Talon hub.
And a picture of the hub with new rubber and driving bolt. It's raised up a bit to show the detail.
The process I used to make it was to drill the center of the tube out to size first, and then part it off at the right length. I used a larger drill than the final size I wanted, because the tube expands during drilling, but I still ended up with a little to small a hole. I finished the hole to size with an abrasive roll in a die grinder. If I were going to make more of them, I'd make a proper size tool to cut the ID, but in this case I just wanted to show how simple it is to make them. This is a picture of the setup I cobbled up to part the tube off. It leaves a very nice finished surface, and is quite accurate.
I think that's as far as I'm going with this.
In summary:
1. Buy some spares now direct from Talon if you can still get them.
2. When they become unavailable, your options are to either make new ones from tubing stock, machine the Talon hub to take one of the available rubbers for other wheels and buy new 10 mm driving bolts to suit them, or make molds and pour new ones from an appropriate grade of casting urethane.
3. Or, buy the replacement BST wheels. I bought mine through a Norton dealer and the factory, which is apparently no longer possible, but I would expect you could deal directly with BST, or from a friendly BST dealer.
Ken