![]() ![]() Keys to making this work are developing “trained eyes” and having a formalized inspection program. Many conditions that will later develop into tire problems can be detected early through basic visual inspection by a trained eye. However, there is another important aspect of tire maintenance that is increasingly difficult to accomplish today, but which can be very important to controlling costs and avoiding tire related surprises: VISUAL TIRE INSPECTIONS. There is concern, however, that even good tire dealers sometimes might not care for a fleet’s tires as well as they would if they owned them.Īll tire gurus properly place inflation maintenance as the top priority in a good tire program. This allows some fleets to reduce overhead, and may seem more appropriate today than in past years because tires have become highly reliable. Secondly, there is a growing trend among fleets to outsource tire service. ![]() Even seasoned tire workers rarely have frequent access to tires in service unless it’s to address a problem or a routine tire change. Many never receive advanced training or accumulate experience beyond basic safety warnings, mounting and dismounting tires on wheels, and mounting those assemblies on vehicles. First, tire workers filling an entry-level shop position often don’t stay at the job long before moving on to higher paying positions. Observations of some fleet tire programs give cause for concern. A lot of knowledge about tires isn’t found in textbooks, but it is accumulated among manufacturers, service personnel and end users. Tires also contribute to suspension springing and damping functions, noise generation and noise transmission, even isolation from electrical conductivity. To maintain vehicle control, all acceleration, braking and cornering forces must be transmitted through the tires. Tires, of course, are vitally important, since they are the only connection between a vehicle and the road. And, always, new designs are compared to earlier, existing tire models that are known performers. Tire engineers must analyze tires as though they were column structures, thin-wall membrane pressure vessels, multi-plane spring structures or other complex objects. Tires, unlike solid structures such as engine blocks, have never fully succumbed to mathematical modeling. They have evolved primarily through empirical changes in design, materials, and manufacturing technology. As they were then and still are now tires are the most complex component on a truck (an undisputed claim, at least until the recent electronics explosion). His words were particularly applicable, because I was working for a large tire company. Those words were directed at me an enthusiastic, young engineer by my older, more experienced boss early in my career. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |