THE FRENCH CONNECTION
Page 111
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Colin Sowman reports from the year's big aftermarket show, Equip Auto in Paris.
For those who got to Equip Auto by avoiding Air France, and its staff who were blockading the Paris motorways, there was plenty to see. Many of the innovations on display were of equal use to Europe's recession-hit truck aftermarket as its car counterparts.
Environmental legislation and concerns were the driving force behind many of the new exhibits: many were designed to make things last longer, to reuse them or prevent waste from becoming a pollutant.
One such item was a demonstration of truck tyre removal and fitting using hand tools from the USA-based Gaither Tool Company (Turbo 65). This set of tools, invented by an ex-trucker, was being used to dismount and mount a truck tyre by hand in less than five minutes—the company says it can be done in two with practice and won't damage the bead.
LEVERED The heart of the system is a clevis, a tool resembling an anchor but with rollers. Once inserted between the bead and the wheel a bar is put through the clevis and levered towards the centre of the wheel. This action brings the roller into contact with the inside of the tyre to force the bead, without touching it, over the rim.
Another bar, called a beaver tail, is used to take the second bead over the rim using the tyre's and wheel's own weight. Putting a tyre back on is almost the reverse but uses two tools called bead keepers which are moved around the rim as the tyre is being put on to prevent it slipping off again. The kit costs more than £300 but it does appear to work.
Gaither also produces what it calls a Super Inflation Ring which is like a bicycle inner tube with a plumber's bending spring inside. This is placed over the rim against the side wall of a freshly fitted tyre to give an initial seal and allow inflation to take place. As the tyre inflates the ring is pushed back off the rim.
The OTC's Monitor HD (Turbo 66) is a hand-held diagnostic device which can be used for fault finding on ABS systems, Cummins' Celect, Detroit Diesel's Dedec II and others. It uses a smart card to select the system under test and development is underway to make cards for other European systems.
Connection of the unit is done via a parallel link which is common on most ECUs and any fault codes are displayed. There is a limited function to operate solenoids. List price of the Monitor HD in the UK is around £1,200.
Wiirth (Turbo 67) used the show to launch a refillable aerosol range called Refillo Can. The system uses thick-walled 400m1 cans with screw-on aerosol tops and a pressure valve at the bottom. Having filled the can with liquid the top is screwed on and the can pressurised with compressed air to 6bar using the dedicated valve arrangement.
The company says the system can be used to dispense almost any liquid excluding paint. Each can costs £19.50 (exun as does the pressurising station. The list price for five litres of penetrating oil (enough for about 20 refills) is around £30 while 20 litres of brake cleaner (about 100 refills) retails at £90.82 (both ex-VX1).
HEATED Two devices for cleaning engines were displayed on the CarbonClean (Turbo 68) stand. Power Engine Flush is a device which pumps a heated cleaning fluid under pressure backwards round an engine's oil system and drains out of the sump. The process takes about 10 minutes per engine and the equipment costs around £5,400.
Running costs are reduced by passing the fluid through four filters and reusing it up to 40 times on either diesel or petrol engines.
CarbonClean's Industrial Diesel Tune fits between the fuel tank and injection pump to run the engine on industrial solvent. Diesel engines are run at 1,200rpm for 40-45 minutes during which time around I/ litres of solvent is used. The cleaning will remove carbon, gum and varnish from the fuel system, combustion chamber and exhaust valves says the company.
Sykes Pickavant (Turbo 68) displayed a prototype diesel injector tester. This uses a hand pump and pressure gauge with the injector discharging on to a mirror-finished plate enabling the operator to view the spray pattern.
A venturi drags the spray behind the plate while the nozzle is enclosed behind perspex. Production models should be available early next year and the price has yet to be announced. When demand picks up the company expects to produce a model to test electrically controlled diesel injectors.