Maintenance is a critical component of ensuring reliability and safety of fleets, their drivers and others on the road. Wheel maintenance is also a significant contributor to the overall efficiency, lifetime operating costs and appearance of commercial vehicle wheels.
When wheels need continuous refurbishing, it can become maintenance and time intensive. Steel wheels require refurbishing, as well as rust removal, re-painting, touch up or other steps. Forged aluminum wheel manufacturers offer options for proprietary surface treatments that allow for simple cleaning.
“Wheel Torque Solutions,” is an innovative, highly researched and developed wheel installation process that identifies opportunities to improve wheel maintenance and retention, and helps reduce costly and dangerous wheel-off incidents.
Wheel Torque Solutions identifies and addresses potential points of failure in the traditional wheel installation process and brings together the optimum nuts, bolts, wheels, tools and processes for increasing torque retention. The components and wheel installation processes were researched and developed with several customers. The research proved that increasing torque retention not only improves performance and safety, but also provides maintenance cost savings over the life of a wheel.
Editor’s note: The article was provided by Brian Thomas, Marketing Communications Manager, Alcoa Wheel and Transportation Products
