Rolling Forward: Tiremakers Improve Fleets’ Fuel Efficiency Through Technology
Modern trucking fleets face difficult challenges on a day-to-day basis. Fuel efficiency is one of the most important concerns to the contemporary fleet owner. Volatile oil prices dramatically affect the cost of fleet operations and maintenance. Growing environmental concerns push the development of green technologies and shape consumer perceptions of businesses. New government regulations to
Cooling Down: Reducing Heat is Key to Improving OTR Tire Performance
While the tire market has been soft the last two years, tire development hasn’t slowed, especially in the giant radial OTR sector. We’ll look at the latest tire technologies and how they improve tire performance in the field. The OTR tire market may have experienced some slowing over the last couple of years but the
Interpreting Angles: The Important Relationship Between Caster, Camber and Toe
When talking about the big three in a vehicle’s suspension, caster is probably the hardest to visualize and the least mentioned. Camber and toe are much easier to wrap your head around, but it’s important that we understand caster because if we don’t, the customer may notice a diminished lack of handling. Perhaps caster can
Dodging Disaster: Follow These Simple Steps to Avoid Costly Wheel-Offs
cy, broken or stripped wheel studs, warped disc brake rotors or loose wheels. Here’s a warning from a major insurance underwriter: Loose and missing lug nuts have resulted in terrible car wrecks, severe injuries, fatalities, bad publicity and expensive litigation. Although you may think technicians would never forget to reinstall and properly tighten the lug
Angled Approach: A Refresher Course on Slip Angles and Cornering Force
This time I’m going to present some basics about slip angles and how they affect you and your tire customer. Let’sbegin by considering a car going through a corner. As the carprogresses through the corner, there is centrifugal force acting on thecar (and its passengers), which tends to pull the car toward theoutside of the
Keeping Quiet: How to Solve Noise, Vibration and Harshness Complaints
If there is anything that frustrates a tire tech, it’s the matter of resolving noise, vibration and harshness issues. The first hurdle is figuring out what the customer is hearing or feeling compared to what the tech hears or feels on a test drive. No two people are the same, so “persistent” NVH problems are
Micro Management: Today’s Smaller Cars Require Some Extra Attention
Long gone are the lengthy wheel-base land cruisers of the past. Their highway space has been taken by mid-size cars, compact cars and now mini- and micro-cars. All of these are smaller than the 1960 Cadillac that could have hauled five NBA starters. After all, it was nearly 19 feet long with a curb weight
Sand Man: We See it Everywhere, But What Does Silica Do?
is equivalent to the total environmental impact of the tire’s production and the raw materials from which it is made. In other words, says Rhodia, “the energy savings made possible by the use of silica tire technology far outweigh the impact of its manufacture.” The French company even goes so far to say that since
Weighing Options: Mechanical Balancing or Balancing Compounds?
There is no easy answer to this age-old question, because each choice has merit. Fleets on both sides of the argument are sold on their choice and most are not about to change their minds anytime soon. Think of it in the same way people think about cars. Some will only “buy American,” while others
Letter of the Law: Are Euro Sizes Pushing P-Metrics Out of the Market?
We have been through a lot when it comes to tire sizing regulations and how to keep our staffs and customers informed. From numeric, to alpha-numeric, to all of the metric options, it hasn’t always been easy to explain what all of this means to the consumer, often leaving them somewhat confused. All of these
Small but Mighty: Tire Valves Important for Safety, Profits
The lowly tire valve operates just the way it did when it first found its way onto an automobile tire back in 1898. It’s not that complicated to understand a standard (non-TPMS) tire valve, but if a mistake occurs in mounting or demounting, or a hard hit on a curb is not inspected closely, you
Changing Ideals: Why There May Never Be a Perfect Tire
When I was working in public relations for a major tire company back in the early 1970s, an older scientist with an impeccable track record told me it was sad that he now had to spend his days working on the radial ply tire. When I asked why, he said, “Because we were just beginning