Killer Corrosion Ravages Wheels
Wheel corrosion is hot topic at maintenance meeting.
STEVE STURGESS
SENIOR EDITOR
At the fall meeting of the Technology and Maintenance Council, held last month in Charlotte, N.C., the hot topic at the Shop-Talk session was wheel corrosion caused by winter chemicals.
Dave Walters, warranty and field service supervisor for Alcoa, held up the center section of a 2-year-old forged aluminum wheel to demonstrate the ravages that the new road chemicals are causing on truck wheels.
Heavy Duty Trucking's Jim Winsor, reporting from Charlotte, described the wheel and the responses from around the room as "pretty gruesome."
It appears the major cause of accelerated corrosion is magnesium chloride, as outlined in the HDT feature "Killer Chemicals" (September 2001). Some of the most seriously affected vehicles are those that distribute the chemicals onto winter roads, said Winsor. Reports from some fleets indicate that after several winter seasons, mechanics can't even get the wheels off the trucks.
If you are seeing accelerated corrosion on the external wheel surfaces, they should be removed for cleaning, shot blasting and refinishing, says Chambersberg, Pa.-based International Marketing Inc. (IMI), which has recently added a powder-coat paint system to its wheel refinishing service.
With its 2020 System, the company shot blasts wheels to remove corrosion and then, through this process, reduces the roughness introduced to the surface to strip the level of corrosion found on today's truck steel wheels. The progressive treatment is necessary to prepare the surface for painting, either with powder coat or with more conventional paint finishes at a thickness that will ensure good wheel clamping for the refinished product.
According to IMI, repeated shot blasting provides such a rough surface that up to 5 mil of paint is needed to fully cover and protect from further rusting. With IMI's smoother finish, the same rustproofing can be obtained with only thinner covering.
Wheel-retention safety requires an adequate clamping of the wheel to the hub by the lug nuts. Accepted industry practice is to ensure only sufficient paint is used to maintain a sealed surface. Too much paint allows the wheel to loosen and overloads studs, leading to breakage and wheel loss.
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