TIRES OF STEEL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 July 1942, Page 4

TIRES OF STEEL

DEVELOPED FOR BRITISH FARM VEHICLES. Thirty thousand farm vehicles, wanted by British farmers for this year's harvest, will be delivered to time, thanks to two new standard wheel patterns. Agricultural engineers in Britain were faced with two shortages —of materials for making pneumatic tires for tractor trailers and tumbrils, and of seasoned timber and skilled wheelwright labour for making the oldfashioned wooden cart wheel. The first of these problems had arisen long before the loss of rubber-produc-ing territories in the East, for war work of greater priority had already made it difficult to get moulds and presses for tire making. So the engineers have evolved an all steel wheel 3ft. in diameter with a minimum tire width of 6in. To absorb the shock formerly taken by the pneumatic tire there are two coil springs between the axle bed and the cart, kept’in line by a sliding pin in grooves. The 3ft. wheel can be turned out in as many months as it took years for the older types. A road test, with two tons over a 7 mile trip, at 10 and then 15 m.p.h., proved the rubberless trailers to be quite as good as those with pneumatic tires. The British Agricultural Engineers’ Association has given to the world the design for the new 3ft. wheel and one for a 4ft. 6in. steel wheel for. farm carts free of all patent and licence rights.