Upgrade Tires

JJBIRISH wrote:

PartyMarty wrote:
.......CapriRacer has posted that the wheel manufacturers do not have PSI as a factor in rating their wheels . Only a weight rating .

Then CapriRacer with all due respect is wrong and I doubt he said exactly what you are saying, and if he did he should come forth with the evidence to support he professional opinion…

Allow me to clarify.

There are no government regulations that require a max inflation pressure be stamped on wheels. Many wheels are NOT marked with a maximum inflation pressure. (and please note the word "many"). - and the important thing is that some are.

And the above is based on observation. I used to work in a tire lab where we had a bunch of wheels, and I was hard pressed to find ANY with a maximum pressure stamped on the wheel. I always puzzled over why that was so. I have talked to several wheel design engineers and to a man, they've all said that inflation pressure plays a minor role in the stresses on wheels.

And just so folks understand - motor vehicle manufacturers have thoughtfully arranged it so that bolt patterns can be used to determine what load is applied to the wheel. So designing a wheel becomes a bit easier as the bolt pattern determines that load and inflation pressure needed - and the wheels are designed appropriately. It's hard to do this wrong.

Further, motor vehicle manufacturers have pretty good feedback systems (called "a warranty system") and tire and wheel failures get investigated.

Unfortunately, we can not say the same for trailer manufacturers. They typically put on minimal tires and wheels (and sometimes less than minimal). And they have virtually no feedback system for tires and wheels. Further, unlike the tires on motor vehicles, trailer tire manufacturers don't have their own feedback systems. They are virtually blind to any sort of negativity. (OK, I'll concede that Goodyear and Maxxis have their own warranty systems and are likely to "see" the sorts of problem we have been discussing - but I'll point out that every other trailer tire manufacturer doesn't.)

As a result we are struggling to compensate. The discussion on wheels and inflation pressure is the result of the attempts to upgrade the load carrying capacity of the tires by increasing the inflation pressure. This has resulted in people confronted with the problem of the wheel limitation. So what to do about it?

In an ideal world, people would use wheels that are matched to the inflation pressure. But people don't want to spend money un-necessarily, so the question boils down to: Is it better to use a tire with the inflation pressure that seems to result in a certain level of risk for a tire failure? - OR - Is it better to risk a wheel failure, by using a higher inflation pressure?

That appears to me to be the choice we are trying to discuss. I'll leave the conclusion to those confronted with the problem, and I'll assist in helping sort this out where I can.