TYRES OF STEEL

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23718, 17 August 1942, Page 6

TYRES OF STEEL

* 30,000 NEW FARM VEHICLES FOR

1942 HARVEST LONDON, May 27. 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 tyres 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 rubberproducing territories in the East, for war work of greater priority had already made it difficult to get moulds and presses for tyre making. So the engineers have evolved an all steel wheel 3ft in diameter with a minimum tyre width of six inches. To absorb the shock formerly taken by the pneumatic tyre 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 seven mile trip, at 10 and then 18 miles an hour, proved the rubberless trailers to be quite as good as those with pneumatic tyres. 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 lor farin carts free of all patent and licence rights, \