Not Another Year in Review
By Kevin Rohlwing
Editor and TIA Senior Vice President
of Education & Technical Services

Every January, we print a “Best Of” issue and rank the stories of last year, “in case you missed it.” With all of the changes we’ve gone through over the past year, where everything is basically the same but different, let’s stick with that theme. Here’s the year 2002 in review.

October 2002 –
“Spoke Wheel Stud Replacement Made Easy”

There are still a lot of demountable rim assemblies out there, and a broken stud in a cast spoke wheel can be a total nightmare. I remember the first time I used the guidelines in the Gunite Service Bulletin and checked my work against a torque wrench. Hitting the 50 ft lbs minimum was never a problem as long as the collar was flush with the face of the cast spoke wheel. Properly torqued studs on the training chassis at the TIA Training Center in Louisville, Kentucky, are also a lot easier to remove. Imagine that.

As long as the collar is flush with the face of the cast spoke wheel, it’s almost guaranteed the minimum torque of 50 ft lbs has been met.


April 2002 –
“Being a Valve Stem Sealing Device”

Another installment in the “Being a component name here” series, this article attempts to help technicians understand the mindset of a rubber grommet or O-ring. Often unappreciated and overlooked, they hold the key to the entire tubeless truck tire assembly, as their failure will definitely result in air loss. Hopefully, their story will touch the hearts of technicians and they’ll start getting the attention and eventual retirement they so richly deserve.

This tiny little O-ring can ultimately destroy an expensive aluminum wheel and radial tire simply because a technician overtorqued or undertorqued the valve stem nut.


July 2002 –
“How to Use a Torque Wrench”

I think my point was that a torque wrench is a vital tool, but your guess is as good as mine when it comes to the comparisons to a rock. While torque wrenches are super-important, they’re also super-sensitive and expensive. Of course, the added physical labor of manually tightening the wheel fasteners when a perfectly good impact wrench sits in the truck seems to be another possible comparison to the most ancient of all tools, the rock...