Heads Up On Plastic Rims

[William McCormick Jr]

A fellow near us, that owns a service station. Was filling a snow blower plastic rim tire. And he blew is arm almost totally off. He will not be back at work for many months. He has all kinds of hardware holding his arm on.


Just thought I would let you guys know.

Sincerely,


William McCormick

[jrw159]

William,
That is sad to hear. Those plastic rims are very dangerous. One must really pay attention to these. Even in good condition, overpressurazation can result in serious injury and/or death. Let alone if they have been banged around and abused.

Thanks for the heads up.

jrw159

[William McCormick Jr]

Originally Posted by jrw159

William,
That is sad to hear. Those plastic rims are very dangerous. One must really pay attention to these. Even in good condition, overpressurazation can result in serious injury and/or death. Let alone if they have been banged around and abused.

Thanks for the heads up.

jrw159

He is one of the good old boys around here too. Gets out there in the mud with you. He probably knew better but still wanted to get the guy up and running.

College engineers.


Sincerely,


William McCormick

[DesertRider33]

I thought plastic rims were only used with solid rubber tires ??

[specter]

Plastic rims on pneumatic tires????????
I haven't seen those before.
Even the cheapest inflatable tires on rims at Harbor Freight all have steel rims.

[farmersamm]

[steve45]

I remember seeing plastic rims on racing go-karts about 40 years ago. Very expensive, but they cut weight and reduce the polar moment of inertia, i.e. faster acceleration.

[Supe]

Old freestyle BMX wheels and cheap kids bikes wheels were also plastic. When working at the fab shop, I was filling a kid's bike tire once. Barely had started to fill the thing when it let go. I lucked out in that the wheel shard shot in the other direction, but the burst was so loud that I had a ringing in my ear for the rest of the day. The kid thought a gunshot had gone off and dove behind a barrel of Cam2.

[kburd]

a local man in our area was filling a go cart race tire that was steel rimmed that he had widened and the weld boke the whole way around and blew apart into two parts while rilling luckily he didnt lose his head. every year guys get killed filling equipment tires etc.

[74fencer]

I had an old ford 1 ton with steel split rims and most of the tire shops in town would run if i brought it to them. I found one brave fella that would change them anytime i needed for the right price!

[wesdavidson]

A few years ago a friend had his hand torn up when a plastic rim from an ultralight aircraft exploded, about 25 psi, major reconstructive surgery.

Also some of the chinese generator wheel kits have them.

[EVguru]

You know, there is a simple rule; Don't inflate small tyres with an air line!

It doesn't matter what the rims are made of, there's just too much danger of going over pressure.

Now, having said that, I do it all the time, but my setup is different from most shops.

My compressor is rarely ever actually turned off, I just use the automatic shutoff.

When I want to use one of the lines, I'll dial the regulator up to the required pressure and when I'm finished I'll wind the regulator back down to zero, purging the line in the process.

If I want to inflate a small tyre, I'll dial up 5-10 psi above the target pressure. One local garage has an air line by their front door with a dedicated regulator for this job.