STARCO Reveal 5 Maintenance Tips to Help Prolong the Life of Dumper Tyres
The site dumper is the workhorse on most construction sites. Its job is to move material from one place to another operating in a full-empty-full-empty cycle. This sets special requirements for the wheels and tyres.
As a supplier of site dumper tyre and wheel solutions in the European market, STARCO is well informed when it comes to tyre quality and development. The company supplied 35,000 site dumper tyres and wheels in the UK in 2017, with their STARCO AS Dumper and STARCO MP Dumper ranges proving to be popular products in this application.
“Apart from accidental damages, poor pressure maintenance is one of the main reasons for a tyres failure to give a full-service life,” says Phil Robbins, Sales Support Engineer at STARCO.
He explains, “tubeless tyres and valves are not completely airtight. They lose air naturally, as the air molecules pass slowly through the body of the tyre and valve, gradually reducing the air pressure. When running underinflated, the sidewall of the tyre is over flexing causing undue strain on the casing of the tyre.”
The air pressures play a very important role in vehicle stability, especially when working on gradients. Lower air pressure reduces the sidewall stiffness of the tyre, which in turn reduces the gradients specified as safe by the dumper manufacturers specifications.
“Due to the type of work that site dumpers do, empty/full/empty-cycles, a site dumper that is empty will appear to be okay, because the tyres will generally have more than enough pressure to support the empty weight of the vehicle. However, as soon as the skip is filled the tyre will be underinflated for the load,” explains Robbins.
This underinflated running can have damaging consequences: The sidewall of the tyre is over flexing causing undue strain on the casing of the tyre. Also, the over flexing causes the bead to rock over the rim flange/horn wearing the bead and can allow foreign matter to enter into the interface between tyre and wheel.
STARCO has five maintenance tips to help prolong the life of dumper tyres, which are as follows:
- Always check tyre pressures at least once a month.
- Always check the tyre pressure before use when the tyre is cold (un-run).
- Never reduce the pressure of a warm tyre.
- Always fit sealing valve caps after inflation and replace if damaged.
- Always inflate the tyres to the pressures recommended by the vehicle manufacturer.