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WHEELS TO , CARRY WEIGHT.

9th March 1920, Page 8
9th March 1920
Page 8
Page 8, 9th March 1920 — WHEELS TO , CARRY WEIGHT.
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By the Inspector.

.... 0 NE OF THE most serious results of the moulders'. strike, so far as the commercial vehicle industry was concerned, was, undoubtedly, the great shortage which soon obtained in conneetion with the supply of cast-steel road -wheels amongst' other castings. This was a trouble with which most manufacturers were all too familiar during the period of war-time production. Belgium had supplied a very considerable proportion of the requirements of this country previous to 1914, and, when that country so soon became -ant off from us, we were not long in realizing to what an extent we had. depended upon tho Belgians in more recent years for steel castings of various kinds, and particularly those used in the average commercial vehicle chassis. Our own prodaction was nothing like adequate for the task that was eimountered in the early days of the war, and, although, Switzerland • and America were, after an interval, drawn upon with satisfactory results, we had to set to work here to discover and use a practicable. alternative.

Here and there, recourse was once again had to the old artillery wooden spoke wheel, but this decision proved to be of little use, not only on account of the krroavn difficulties of that class of wheel, unless it were excellently built and of high-grade well-seasoned timber, but also because we very soon ran up against the difficulty of acute shortage of supplies of suitable wood.

The situation was, before long, very considerably relieved by recourse to the employment of pressed steel disc wheels. These had been tried before the war and had, as a rule, been abandoned because of the troubles that were found to develop in connection with the particular method of riveted assembling, which was the accepted practice in the•earlier days. Another objection tha,t had originally been taken to this class of construction was that the employment. of the steel discs rendered the brake and other nearby parts more inaccessible than ever. And again, it was claimed, with reason, that the wheels themselves were much harder to handle, when it became necessary to dismount them in order to equip them with tyres or for any other similar purpose. Objections of this kind, however, could carry little weight in face of the insistent demand that, if wewere to have war lorries, we, must have wheels to ran them on, and sheer necessity soon produced a disc wheel in which the previous method of riveting was eliminated, and such riveting as was necessary was so placed that the old difficulty of keeping the rivets tight was almost entirely banished, so that very large numbers of an improved class of steel disc wheel were in the end employed for war service, and, on the whole, they were entirely satisfactory.

Let us go back a little earlier than the outbreak of war and recall that, for a long while, users struggled with the heavy maintenance charges that were involved in the use of improperly constructed artillery . wheels. They were found, particularly in such service as that of the London General Omnibus Co., to be unpleasantly'subject to weather variations and, in a trying season, shrinkage invariably took place in all but wheels constructed of the very best seasoned timber and built on first-class lines. Then, again, there was the difficulty that, if, by any unfortunate, chance, a hub warmed up, the wedge ends of the spokes very soon worked loose.

This reminiscence again recalls the unforeseen and rather amusing experience which re-suited from an c2.2 attempt to get over the difficulty of the creaking wheel by the employment of a special type of tangent spoked wheel. The idea of this design was that the tangentially placed spokes would be driven up tighter in wedge fashion as the wheel rolled forward. And, in practice, as a matter of fact, this did happen as a general rule, but the designers, and others for the matter of fact, had quite overlooked that, in the rush of the vehicle operation in those early days, and at a time when 'the necessity for adequate spare part provision was not clearly recognized, a right-hand wheel as often as not had, in emergency, to find its new billet on a left-hand axle journal. And this, of course, had the alarming result, instead of wedging up the spokes, of pulling them out, because the wedges were in the opposite direction to that which had been the original intention of the designers.

The writer recalls, while scribbling off some of these old wheel troubles, how, in certain eases during a particularly trying 'summer, resort was had to

• the rather de:astio "expedient of removing the wheels over night from the axles and keeping them submergech below the surface of conveniently adjacent river water until they were required next morning.. It must.be confessed, however, that the remedy was only doubtfully successful. I suppose that the German industrial chassis were the first to appear with practicable east-steel wheels." The Daimler-Mercedes —more familiary known in this Country as the " Milnes-Daimler '—had steel wheels g that stoed a lot of rough service. The Duerkopp and the Bussing were, however, so far as my memory carries me; equipped with wooden wheels.

A wheel which always puzzled me in the earlier days of the industry's development, was the enormous wooden-spoked driving wheel that was fitted to the old Thames chassis. Cann, of Folkestone was. and may be still for all I know to this day, a most enthusiastic user of Thames vehicles for char-a-banes and bus work, and he showed me, years ago, some of these huge wheels, which were apparently as sound as a bell after gruelling work. Their performance was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that they were certainly not over tyred.These big wheels, of course, resulted in very easy riding machines, and they were a favourite illastration for Colonel Crompton, who was such an advocate of big wheels. His own very early experiments in India showed his faith in the large diameter.

Troubles of this kind, however, are fortunately only interesting nowadays as items of what is almost ancient history. The high-grade east steel spoked wheel is, to-day, in the majority along with the quite satisfactory steel disc-wheel. The so-called cruciform. east steel wheel has been definitely superseded by the more modern hollow spoked cast-steel wheel with its ample radii and effective distribution of metal. As a matter of personal ehoice, I should find it difficult to decide between the modern steel spoked wheel and the more recent types of flanged pressed steel disc. There is much to be said, so far as the heavier models are concerned, for the appearance of the disc wheel, and the claims made for it on the score of cleanliness are also easily substantiated. The cast steel wheel is probably more easily handled and, I believe, has a slight advantage in the matter of weight. The wire spoked wheel, tried, at one time, on that most unusual type of motorbus produced by the Daimler Co., was not a success, nor are wire spoked wheels likely, in the opinion of the writer, to be adopted. for aby type of commercial vehicle, whether it be for the little van or the heavier models:

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