No Alternatives to Multi Piece Rims in Machinery?

You are right... but sometimes we all assume these wheels are "just like that" and nobody cares about improving their safety by partially or completely redisigning them.

We discuss on this forum the inherent dangers of electrical energy; it's generation, distribution, control, metering... Advice offered to an anonymous (often) clueless questioner is always "Consult a local professional", "Hire a professional", "Stop what you are doing and get some professional assistance".

Many people believe technology is our collective savior. Things - all things - have only advanced to their states of their arts... today.

I believe the tire/wheel industry being discussed here would LOVE to come up with something better that what is available today. Until the state of their art advances to the point where an individual with a room temperature IQ (Fahrenheit) can work on these, the industrial tire/wheel business should be left to professionals.

Hi Doorman, I feel you are missing the point: on my post I simply told about a really disgraceful situation I had to witness yesterday. On the other hand, without any knowledge about heavy machinery rims I wondered how come such critical parts of equipment have remained unchanged for half a century. I do not expect you, nor anyone at CR4 to come right now with a magic solution to this. Finally: this discussion may also help some of us not to forget the dangers / increase awareness abut the risks of compressed air in such an innocent looking container as a truck´s tire....

Doc, my friend, your point isn't lost on me.

Even though I'm familiar with the dangers of these wheels, it never hurts to be reminded. I didn't intend to make light of your thread or your concern.

As redfred pointed out, these are indeed little bombs.

Sorry, I feel I have over reacted !

I found a link to an accident where this is the SOP.

http://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/investigations/face/07ny137.htm

I worked at a Bondag tire retreading shop for a summer when I was 19. I worked on truck flat tire repair. These were 20 inch rims with single locking rings. Hardest part was learning how to swing the hammer to push the bead back, so the locking ring could be removed.

There was one style of rim the never let me work on, as it was split to the center of the rim. The guy with many years of experience called it a suicide rim. He would hit it many times while it was being aired to ensure it snapped back into the locking groove.

This was north of where you used to live in GF ND.

My expertise is electrical but I think I know why these rims are fabricated in two pieces, fabrication costs non-linearly increase with the size of a rim. A motorcycle or automobile rim can be reasonably but not cheaply machined out of a solid billet of material. This is the method used in making mag or alloy rims.

There is another aspect of this scenario that is very easy for all to forget. The weight of the truck and its load also contribute to the energy that gets released when a truck tire blows. Even if this rim was fabricated from two stamped pieces that were welded together to helium leak check quality, a truck tire contains as much energy as a small bomb. When one gets an indication that this system is failing, do not assume a simple repair is sufficient. As the video shows, rim separation is not needed for a truck tire blowout to cause an injury to those too close.

I'm sorry that the operator was severely hurt.

These types of rims are used because you can't stretch the tire beads over the rims....the lack of safety precautions and/or training is really preventable...

...anybody working with or around these types of wheels should be required to watch a short safety film, such as these....once a year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQbKCd3ezrA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HANwJp8Z5mc

Some industries are super safety conscious, while others are not, or even ignore many safety issues due to cost.

Matters such as this should be brought to the attention of the Legislators, so that it must be made an offence to deny employees proper safety training, where circumstances demand same.

Well as we say where I work, 'Sure, But do you have any idea how much paper work that is going to involve!?!'

The problem we have is that if one piece of equipment gets modified every single unit identical to it has to have he same modification done, even if they don't need it, as well thus making even the most basic of improvements to anything a monumental task of technical analysis and approval paperwork first followed by countless hours of changes that need to be done to other units that don't actually need to be changed as well.

For example a while back the operators of one of our machines asked if I could add a pair of little lights to one of our units to make it easier for them to see down a specific device on the machine.

I said no problem being it would take maybe an hour plus at best $25 in parts to do.

Nope. To do that would have taken several days of pre analysis of the units electrical systems to make sure that it could support the extra 2.5 amps of lighting being added plus all the documentation that went with it then if done about 50 other machines would have had to have had the upgrade done to them even if their operators didn't need the lights ending in an approximate time involvement of something like 2000 man hours plus $10,000 in materials used equalling a grand total of roughly $110,000 spent by the company to do the addition of the two lights.

Technically speaking the electrical circuit for lighting had a 20 amp working capacity of which at best 12 amps of it is being used and there is a light already less than 7 feet away, but pointing the wrong way, supplied by a 14 ga wire carrying only a single 1.5 amp load of that light that is not able to be moved to shine into the needed second location plus all the parts I needed are stocked on our service truck.

Taking "SHORTCUTS" ain't safe...

Because of accidents as you described OHSA requires these multi piece rims that are less then 80% inflated. To be removed from the vehicle and service by authorized service company. Requiring a complete break down and inspection.

In the many years of heavy equipment repair. Have always looked at the worst possible out come of a failure. And learned to position myself out of the way. With the many stories of those accidents with those types of rims wouldn't catch me standing in front of it. Heck I don't even stand in front of a passenger car tire when filling with air.

The solution for slow moving vehicles such as dozers is simple. About a dozen clamps could be bolted around the rim to act as a back up to prevent the 'clip in' retaining ring from escaping. The question I have is why isn't it being done? There must be problems with this arrangement, although having said that I am sure I have seen a similar arrangement. I think the outer 1/4 or so of rim is a separate piece that is held by the clamps. This removes the retaining ring altogether. I tried to google images of dozers but all of the images are of the retaining ring type. I will keep my eye open as I drive around. There's a lot of trucks go past our location!

Jim

This is from a local company called RimTec.

When servicing split rim wheels etc, the safety procedure as long ago as the late 1950's had the wheels inflated in a safety cage. The lead mechanic on the Great Boulder Gold Mine 'knew better'. He lost his head when the split rim wheel blew during inflation while it was leaning up against the outside of the safety cage. Following safe working procedures might be an immediate alternative.

You are the first to mention the cage, which appears to be only used (known about?) in some Commonwealth countries and Germany!

Or did all the others simply forget about it?

When I have inflated such tyres, we were not only required to fully fasten the cage door, we also had to wear ear and eye protection as well....was that unusual? Overdone?

Some of the others there simply inflated the tyre (no incidents luckily) while I ran for cover! I am a tyre coward!! I admit it!!!!

I have to admit, I really never knew JUST how dangerous it possibly was, I certainly did not realise that it was a potential killer.....

Thanks to all for the "heads up".....

When I was a student (1974-76) I worked the summers in a truck tire repair facility. We had a cage we put the tires in for inflating, attached the filling hose to the valve, then remotely turned the air on.

We had to inspect all the rims, and with even the slightest damage they were discarded.

There are several types of split rings, and as another poster noted, at least one type was very dangerous.

The really dangerous style of split ring hubs that were then common are now outlawed in Canada. There has been a huge push to tubeless tires with single piece hubs, even on the largest of tires.

You cannot easily break these tires down by hand (OK - sledge hammer). They typically take a machine. The center of the hub has a smaller diameter, allowing the bead to be pushed in, then the tire is eased off at an angle.

My first job when I was 16 was McGraw Tire in Co. Springs (1965) as I had learned on the farm in Iowa, how to repair tires mounted on these rims. Inspection, cleaning, and tire soap...lots of it, so the rubber seats smoothly as air is applied. This application of vegetable soap is a step that is often shorted or skipped entirely, resulting in torn beads and on split rims that 'snap' of the stuck rubber giving way can result in a blow to a metal ring that will dislodge it. Ignorance of simple things can be a harsh teacher.

Tires on heavy equipment have so many plies (thickness) that 2 piece wheels are a requirement as the bead becomes inflexible. Cost versus profit results in accidents like this. Why call for service if it just needs a little air?

You're right on as to the 'cause'.

From the victims viewpoint, he probably was daydreaming when he should have been paying attention.

I was 12 years old when I was first introduced to the dangers of "split rims". The gas station where I started my mechanical education, I was shown why you always have these tire rims caged when inflating them. And why you do not stand near them while inflating them.

We didn't have a tire cage so we alway sat the tire and rim flat under our single post hoist and sat the hoist over them before inflating them. I witnessed one occasion where we had a rim come apart and it had enough force to lift the hoist about 2 inches up. And it was from that time on, I always had a great respect when dealing with them or just being around them.

I rate them right up there with suspension coil springs.

When I was in my 30's I was in a friends shop talking to his dad about about switching the 16 1/2" in rims on my Ford van to 16" for better tire availability. His dad's brother was inflating a split rim for one of their Tri-axle dump trucks, and you guessed it it exploded off the rim knocking his uncle through the wall into the office. When we got back from the hospital we went looking for the rim and tire. We found the tire hanging on the broken rafter partially out the roof with the main rim still attached to it . Thus making it really unsafe to be anywhere near that area of the shop. we never found the ring any where near the shop building until a few years later when we were cutting down a tree struck by lightning and found it up near the top. When I see a split rim being inflated without a cage I turn tail and run. Also my local tire guy I call nine finger Tim because he lost his middle finger up to his second knuckle. He said self admitted stupidity of being in a hurry and not using his cage and having said it never happens to him until it did. Just scares me to this day when I see one of these wheels. My thought on this is why don't they go to bead lock rims, like sprint cars and drag cars use, bolting the tires with metal rings inside and out trapping the tire to the rim. Seems a lot safer, may take a little more time to work on but a lot safer in the end.

In this case it's too late, but you might check https://www.osha.gov/Publications/wheel/wheel-chart-booklet.pdf

I first read my father's Occupational Health and Safety Magazine in the late 1950's
in the gold mines of Australia. He was an avid devotee of the magazine and used it to adopt safety practices in all aspects of the underground mining and surface operations. The magazine could have saved many lives.

As OP, have to say sorry for not following up this thread, but I have been almost 2 weeks on a business trip in Europe only with access to lousy extremely expensive wifi access