tire rim weight rating

Wheels like tires have a max load capacity. Wheel mfg also warn not to overl;oad the wheel.
Having ran commercial using the the same size trucks mentioned for over 1.2 million miles I've had and I've seen the results of over loaded wheels and tires. At some point in time or miles cracked or broken centers....cracked or broken valleys....or split tire bead seats are common with wheel over loading.
Never over load a wheel or a tire used on the highway full time.

noteven wrote:
Hands up - who has seen a 2500-4500 250-450 series pickup or cab and chassis truck with a structural wheel failure on the side of the road in the last 31 years?

Loose wheel nuts/bolts wheel fall off does not count for this survey...

None here on a truck but I have seen a lot of wood trailers broke down on the side of the road from abuse and really over loaded..Every year I see trucks from 1/2 ton up so over loaded one would think something has to give but it's always the utility trailer that fails,not the truck..I have always thought I would see a 1/2 ton truck break an axle /rim or something but notta although Burningman said he broke an axle on a 1/2 ton with a TC.

Here is mine http://i679.photobucket.com/albums/vv151/ticki2/radarstationme014.jpg
I know of half a dozen other over the years in my area

Hands up - who has seen a 2500-4500 250-450 series pickup or cab and chassis truck with a structural wheel failure on the side of the road in the last 31 years?

Loose wheel nuts/bolts wheel fall off does not count for this survey...

CapriRacer wrote:
The best research I have done says that there is no regulation that requires wheels to be identified by maximum weight carrying, or maximum pressure - BUT - wheels are designed and manufactured such that they will carry the largest weight for the vehicle they are fitted to - and that is controlled by the number of lugs.

Yes, that's right, the number of lugs. Then that controls the weight limitations of the vehicle and therefore the wheel.

Further, tire inflation pressure doesn't matter when it comes to wheel strength. It's the max load that overwhelms things to the point where stresses due to tire inflation pressure are trivial.

If the weight capacity of wheels was only controlled by the number of lugs all 8 lug wheels would have the same capacity which is not true . You have over simplified.

The best research I have done says that there is no regulation that requires wheels to be identified by maximum weight carrying, or maximum pressure - BUT - wheels are designed and manufactured such that they will carry the largest weight for the vehicle they are fitted to - and that is controlled by the number of lugs.

Yes, that's right, the number of lugs. Then that controls the weight limitations of the vehicle and therefore the wheel.

Further, tire inflation pressure doesn't matter when it comes to wheel strength. It's the max load that overwhelms things to the point where stresses due to tire inflation pressure are trivial.

Coming from construction bussines, I used to overload my vehicles on daily basis.
Have never heard about steel rim failure, regardless overload.
When I can't provide solid statistics, my recollection is that steel rims can take 50% overload at slow speeds just fine.
I read reports about rims failures, but that most of the time was aftermarket aluminum wheel.
Additional note, I paid extra when custom-building my dually Ford to have aluminum wheels.
What the site did not tell was that I had only 4 aluminum rims and 3 steel ones.
To add salt to the injury the alu wheels were polished only on 1 side with ugly stamping on other side .
Made rotating the wheels impossible.

I tried going to the dealer for the wheel info back in the day when I was analyzing my set-up... they told me they had no data or ratings on the wheels. Dealers either did not have or did not want to disclose the ratings.

Maybe it is different now, but I was very frustrated. Don't know why it is so secretive... my guess is that lawyers have something to do with it. If wheels were to fail for whatever reason, dealers and mfgr's can use it as an out.

Have you thought of taking the VIN number to a Ford dealer and get the build sheet?
It should list tires and wheels. Then the dealer can look up the wheels.
This only works if they are from the factory!

Practically speaking, I’d rather have a tire rated 10% more than the wheel than overload the tire and wheel by 10%. YMMV. I wouldn’t personally worry about a 4080 load capacity tire on a Ford 18 that comes stock with tires rated at 3760. Well, that’s the stock tires I had on my SRW.

That being said, I’m probably one of the few people here that are actually under my GVWR every time I checked, and I did run 19.5s on my SRW because I wasn’t aware of the 4080 18s.