Hot Rods The worst incident of all my years in a shop

As many of you know that have spent years working on cars it can be a dangerous job ,hobby or both. Many may not know what I'm talking about if you are not a old timer. You may add to this if you want.I hope you,ve never have seen this !!!!!. This probably happen about 50-60 yrs ago in the shop I was working in. A co-worker that day was working on a large milk truck with (split rims,) common years ago as many of you know.While he was working on it the rim blew off in his face.The tire & wheel were not in a cage . My buddy lived but never was the same. I just read a article today where the same thing had happened years ago to a mechanic , brought back memories I still think of that day when I'm laying under a car or doing a project when tired or in a hurry We all want to make it till 100 right? Be Safe.. Gene in Mn

 

I built 8x8s Hemmits for the Army National Guard during the Iraqi War. They had split rims. While reading your story a could actually see and hear the cage jumping up off the shop floor.

 

The dangers of multiple piece rims are blown off by many new guys in the hobby. I'm not talking about actual young tire techs, I'm talking about people who buy old trucks to restore. Most have no idea what they are dealing with. I belong to a few old Ford truck FB pages and almost on a monthly basis some guy will come on with his new purchase and ask about working on the notorious Ford widow makers, the worst of all mulipart big truck wheels. And for each question there will be 2-3 misinformed dolts who will play down the danger of working on the Ford wheels. My favorite idiotic piece of advice is just wrap a chain through hand holes while inflating and you'll be fine. There is a lot more danger to these wheels and why no reputable tire shop will touch them.

 

Had a ford F600 dump truck....i thought those split rims were the coolest thing...Big ass snap ring.....Danger for the unaware or careless for sure....

 

There are obvious dangers in a shop but for those that do paint and body work there’s a Hidden danger. This applies to all chemicals used in the shop also, Products containing neurotoxins including paint some cleaning supplies even some paint removing hand cleaners. I have peripheral neuropathy because of my trade as a body man and painter So where are your rubber gloves and dust mask and respirators to protect yourself.

 

The Ford rims I am referring to do not have a snap ring, they are made up of two almost equal halves that connect together by turning one half 180°. They depend on the air pressure in the tire to hold them together. The biggest problem with them is most people don't know anything about them.

 

Yes, there are extreme, and even deadly, risks that are taken every day. In a shop, on a race track and even basic day to day driving. When young I felt pretty invincible, taking unnecessary risks. We all see preventable risks daily. Even just watching car shows on TV when "pro" builders do not use proper eye protection while welding, etc. Never let your gaurd down.

 

Had to do a split rim a month ago. Made darn sure the ring was solidly in place, inflated it while pointed at the wall and still prayed.

Today I put a floor jack under my car to see where the wet spots on the floor were coming from. Rear seal looks like. I was temped to reach under and wipe the pan with a rag real quick, thought for a moment, went and got jack stands.

I did many split rims as a teen in the '70s, and crawled under cars with every funky jack around, without even thinking about it.

 

I started working on medium duty trucks (school buses) in December of 1990. Back then, almost all buses still used split ring wheels. With no training other than “here’s how you do it”, I repaired hundreds of them. Our “tire cage” was a homemade POS job made of black iron pipe and plate steel. I thank God every time I see a post about these kinds of wheels that I never had one come apart. I had to repair one about 10 years ago at home and the best “cage” I could think of was to lay it flat on the ground and then lay the bucket of my big front end loader on top of it. Sketchy as hell. I told Dad at the time, “this is the last one I ever tangle with”. Never again, no way, not me.

Back in 1990, shortly before I joined the school bus company, a mechanic at a location 45 miles north of us was killed by mounting a 16.5” tire on a 16” rim. Fortunately, 16.5’s are almost a complete thing of the past.

 

My first real job was at a gas station. The day I started changing tires, the boss pointed to a section of the one corner of the building where a lot of the interior plaster was tore up. "That was where the ring on a split ring wheel hit the ceiling after it came apart one time. Fortunately, no one got hurt." There the "tire cage" was the single post car lift. The split wheel was placed under the hoist arms and they were lowered to about an inch above the wheel before the tire was inflated. Only the old experienced guy inflating the tire was allowed in the shop when split wheels were worked on. I think the boss quit doing split wheel tire changes or repairs shortly after I started there, back in about 1972.

 

I got a job in a milk processing plant right out of high school. They ran about 10 delivery trucks, most still had the two piece wheels. The truck shop was up a small hill about a football field from the bottling plant. I was out on the dock unloading a load of empty milk crates when I heard a loud BOOM. The tire rack they put mounted spare tires in was made like an H, with the horizontal part extending past the uprights. The tire guy had mounted a tire and put it in the rack on that extended part on the end, then left for lunch. Policy was to check and double check before they went in the rack, he didn’t do it, and the ring blew off. Luckily, no one was in the shop at the time, the ring cut a near perfect circle through a 3/4” plywood wall as well as the tin outside. Had anybody been standing there they would have been cut in two. Needless to say, they fired the tire guy when he got back from lunch.

 

I had a neighbor that was a mechanic at a oil refinery. He was very talented and could fix about anything. As a teenager in the sixties working on cars we had more desire than knowledge. He would ask what are you working on ? I would tell him and he would say i`ll come over and help you get started. This ended when he was hit by the ring from a split rim that someone else was working on. He suffered a severe brain injury that left him barely able to walk.

 

When I got to Vietnam there was a pile of split rim tires in front of the shop the size of a duce and a half. They hired us a Vietnamese helper and we taught him how to brake the tires down patch the tube clean the rim and re install the ring. This was a field maintenance shop where we used the trucks air compressor for air. Our guy was about 5foot tall and maybe weighed 90 lbs would climb inside the rim, ring down, to air up the tire.
The one time I saw the ring blow off ,tire, rim, and helper were 3 foot off the floor.
Took a while to calm him down but he wasn't hurt.

 

Same here old iron After 50 plus years the nerves under my skin are so damage that it feels like a gazillion things crawling all over me, don't know what's worse the nerve pain or all the joint pains. Fortunately, there are a lot more safety protocols in shops for younger guys. and I was a 17-year-old kid working at the local Firestone dealer. I was shown how to do split rims and was told if they ever caught me airing up a tire outside of the cage I would be fired on the spot. I still had one blow and the shear force threw me back15 feet into a pile of tires. The service manager cleared 5 stalls getting to me before I realized what happen. He was white as a ghost, and I am sure I was too! That cadge did its job. Wasn't a mark on me. Well maybe in my shorts. That was in 1972 and still if I see an old split rim, I still get nervous. Larry

 

There is no danger if only deflating one? I have never worked on a split rim, but have seen many and heard all the stories about them. The more I hear of these things, the more I want to avoid them. Have the new trucks a different system, or are they still used?

 

The danger is in airing them up because all too many fools will lean over one when they air it up and not have it in a proper cage.
Walk around back of a lot of truck tire shops and you will see the tube steel cage that they inflated the tires in, As often as not that cage will be bent up very noticeably.
Our go to used tire and wheel guy in Waco Tx got killed in the early 70's when a split rim ring took half of the top of his head off. Far as I know that ring is still laying on top of that building as his son said that anyone that went up and touched it was fired on the spot.
When I had the split rims pulled off my 71 GMC and put 16 inch aluminum wheels on it a few years ago. The guys at the tire shop I have done business with for the past 43 years never let the tires touch the shop floor when they took them off, they lifted those heavy buggers off the hubs and took them around to the back and put them straight in the back of the bed. That company and they are pretty big has a standing policy that if you roll a split rim into the tire shop you are fired on the spot. They don't want them on the place. Remembering that 40 years ago that was where one of those bent up cages was. The old farmers who favored those wheels tend to beat the crap out of them out in the fields and further.
I see the same nonsense on a FB AD truck group I partcipate on. guys who say that there is nothing dangerous with them.

 

Can someone explain the danger? Hard to visualize when I don't know what you're talking about.

 

watch the video in post 15…….or read post 14 ?
Tyres can explode, the split rim can blow apart when filling with air.

cut and paste from another source;

Failure of multipiece (Split Rim) wheels can result in violent separation, the explosive release of high pressure air and the ejection of component parts.

 

The worst injury in my Tool & Die/Pattern shop was an apprentice cut his thumb off using the band saw. I put a tourniquet on his wrist, sat him down, we picked up his thumb and put it in the refrigerator. The paramedics were there in minutes, took him and his thumb to the ER, Dr's reattached his thumb, he lost the use of the middle joint, so it was way better than no thumb. The Paramedics asked me how I knew to put the thumb in the fridge, my answer was seemed like the thing to do. This young man worked for me 7 years, good guy/employee/craftsman was sorry to see him move on. I'm proud to say, I've worked on cars, in Tool & Die shops all my life, still a DIY guy and have all my fingers/ eyes, the only injuries I ever received of consequence were from my car racing hobby. I always say, I'm Luckier than Smart, Thankful to be here and my Guardian Angel has watched over me from childhood till present day.

 

My dad had a ‘46 Chevy 1.5 ton, he needed a new tire. 8.25/20. It had the rims with the ring around them. Me and my dad (I was maybe 10) watched the guy mount the tire, then the guy grabbed the air chuck, my dad grabbed my shoulder and led me around to the other side of the truck behind the cab.
Nothing happened, all was fine.
When I asked my dad about he said he knew a guy who lost sight in one eye and had a deformed face when a ring flew off. He grumbled some words about not using a cage.
Always kept my eye out at tire shops since then. Never seen one come apart, don’t want to either.

 

I did a lot of truck tires in my youth. A bunch of my trucks were split rim. Some were the 1-piece ring, others 2-piece. At work we would refuse to work on wheels that were badly rusted or bent. Each service truck had a cage, I never saw one used. We just put the tire under the rear step bumper when we aired it up. It was common to stop at some point and reposition the lock rings.

 

I owned an M35A2 for years. My first project was to get rid of 20 in split rims . I switched to 22.5 ONE piece wheels . The issue I had in my mind was getting a flat on the steering axle . ring and tire coming off at speed . I knew nothing about split rims , but all I read was run from them fast as lighting . 22.5 s could be mounted by a kid safely . 22.5s are radial design , tubeless . 20 in Military tires were really designed for off road service . Strange thing there were tools on board of the truck to repair the tires by the driver . Let me tell you , this stupid driver was not touching anything on those wheels but the lug nuts to remove them also very carefully .

I always say the person you hurt the most is your family .

 

When I was a teen in the 70's I worked at a gas station in a small farming town and farmers were always bring in grain truck tires to repair. Another teen working there was airing up a truck rim and it blew the split ring off. (no cage) it flew all around that shop and scared the hell out of me. That guy didn't work there much longer.

 

The split wheels came from the time period before radials. The sidewalls were so stiff there was no way to mount them on a single one piece rim. A single lock ring was bad enough, some had two, making them a three piece wheel. Most truck tire shops have a chart on the wall with pictures of every split wheel ever made, how to change them, and which ones are no longer useable or are obsolete.

In my younger days I worked for some logging outfits that were still using 10:00 x20 split rims, and I learned how to change them. We used a chain wrapped through the tire and rim, never had any problems. As they got newer trailers, the old ones with the split rims got scrapped or sold.

Surprisingly there are still millions of split rims still in use….on container chassis. Most tire shops won’t touch them anymore, the steamship lines that own the chassis’s have their own tire guys. And they run the cheapest bias ply tires they can get, sourced mostly from Asia. Think about that the next time you’re driving beside one on the Interstate!

 

Thankfully split ring wheels have been obsolete for 20-25 years. One piece rims are now standard and resemble car wheels.

 

After 35 years in the truck and earthmover tire business with Goodyear, I was blessed to not have to notify an employee’s family of an fatal accident. We did have failures, but all those safety training videos and required equipment kept us relatively safe.

Tubeless radial truck tires on one piece rims brought a whole new inherent danger.

The zipper tear.
Caused by running the tire under inflated (not flat) and causing the body plies to over flex to the point that they were fatigued and weakened. When aired up after a flat repair the fatigued cords are over stressed and abruptly break and the sidewall ruptures, releasing 3500+ pounds of kinetic energy.
I had some cages destroyed, walls blown down, temporary hearing loss, and one lucky guy who only had his pants blown off, but fortunately nothing worse than an compound arm fracture.
No lock ring envolved, just the force from the sudden release of air.

Let’s be careful out there.

 

Wicarnut, like you I am lucky to never have had a serious injury in the shop. Luck plays a big part, because smarts sure doesn't. While polishing a shaft in the lathe with emery tape I had a brain fart and squeezed down on the tape with my thumb. It sucked me in before I could say S**t! When the nail finally came off I tacked it on the wall above my lathe to remind me not to do dumb stuff...

 

Working with a friend repairing a tube and stuffing it back in a truck tire. We both thought it was in right and rather than partially inflate it and make sure there weren't any creases, we aired that puppy up. Guess we hadn't noticed the bad area around the valve stem. The valve stem blew out of the tube and straight through my friend's wrist. 5 hours of surgery later, we'd both realized we'd made a mistake. To this day, I don't take anything for granted when it comes to tires or much of anything else.

 

I changed dozens of tires on multi piece rims...There was no industry standard for rim and snap ring design. Before working on it, you need to check the look of the snap ring fit...A pile of rings and rims not matched was considered scrap metal.Any rust build up needed removal..I used cages or a chain wrapped through the rim hand holds. The wheel needed to be snap ring side up when on the ground with chains so you could observe the ring fitting securely into the rim as it inflated,then get out of the way.. Obviously use a clip on air chuck and a handy air shut off....I had one snap ring inside a cage let go, scarey but no damage other than the wheel....We mounted radials on the two piece rims with no problems...But these were school buses not loaded to the limit trucks..