What alloy is used in steel belted tires?

302 is work hardening. Why use stainless if it is encapsulated in rubber. Music wire seems more appropriate. It is stronger and costs less.

You know, I'm pretty sure it's 301.

snipped-for-privacy@spamc> I understand that a stainless steel is used since rusting of the

It is not stainless. They do rust; quickly too! That is why every tire puncture should be considered two operations; filling the injury with rubber to exclude moisture and sealing the air chamber with a proper patch. And neither of those mean using an asphalt coated string plug!

I have no idea of the alloy. A Goodyear rep once demonstrated that the steel conducted heat very fast.

--Andy Asberry recommends NewsGuy--

Here's the alloy:

It's a high-carbon steel. Note that tire cords are plated with brass or bronze for better adhesion to the rubber.

-- Ed Huntress

Very true. Just look at any tire that's been "run down to the belts" - If it's been off the car for more than a day or so, the belts are rusted. Whatever it is, it ain't stainless...

Applied in a manner anything even remotely resembling correctly ("It doesn't leak" is well within reasonable), a plug is just as good at sealing the belts as your semi-hysterical call for a two-step operation.

Think about it... If it seals air inside the tire, and the "glop", be it asphalt, or whatever the formula actually is, is on the full length (which is the normal case) then how is any air getting to the belts? No air, no oxidation, no problem...

Cords in tires? Look at the possible future. Dixon

Don, it is your lucky day. Last Thursday, I retired after 40 years in the tire business. I'm through trying to educate folks contrary to what they "know".

We repaired over 6000 tires this year; from passenger to earthmover. More than 25% were repairs of "repairs"; leaking string plugs.

The worst thing about plugs is that the interior of the tire is not inspected. A plug also voids the warranty of EVERY tire manufacturer.

Now, you can have the last word.

--Andy Asberry recommends NewsGuy--

How about he "mushroom plugs" that have a patch and plug in one piece? Most are installed from the inside, but I've used ones that install with an injector from the outside. They are a compound rubber plug, not the tarry string. The "glue" used chemically vulcanizes the plug in the tire.

Bekaert is one of my suppliers. They have only recently gotten back into the brush wire business. We used to buy 20k lb. containers full of scratch brush wire from them and it was the best! For some reason they stopped making it. They just set-up their equipment from their Belgian plant in China and staffed the new plant with the old Belgian engineers. The wire is great and cheap. In contrast, the biggest brush wire maker in the states makes good wire but their packaging and surface oil is inconsistent, dirty and hard to handle. I hate to say it, but it looks like China is going to be my biggest supplier.

When they make tire-cord cable, there are seven wires twisted together using the brass coated hard drawn wire. When the first spool runs out, they scrap the other six and start fresh. This scrap then sells for twenty cents a pound. The Spanish Prison system buys a big bunch of it, crimps it and makes it into wire wheel brushes that they sell to retail hardware wholesalers like "Vermont American". Next time you see those brass-looking wire brushes, you'll know the story. It's pretty hard to compete with prison labor and Government run factories, so we lost all that retail business years ago. GOOD THING!!! There's very small margin in it.

Nope!

I work at a tire factory and went by the wire calander the other day, some of the boxes say BEKAERT and they have dessicant shipped in the boxes with the wire. So I'd say it's probably the alloy of Ed's link and it's not stainless. RogerN

And the Europeans are not as insecure , so they DONT have steel belts in their tires ! They also drive better ...

The steel wears out the tire faster for the heat . Steel belts bust out the sides sometimes Long ago i used Continental brand . All cord , no steel .

Radials will steer bad if you swap Right to Left & vice versa .

Just before they take a set , they steer like you had power steering !

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Ed Huntress wrote:

AFAIK those are the only sort that are legal here in the UK. Also only permitted within the inner 3/4 of the treaded area and nowhere else.

Mark Rand RTFM

You never know when usless facts stored in the dim recesses of the mind will become usefull. Going back to the late 80's early 90's:

High carbon steel bars approximately 4"X4"X20' were sent by truck from Roanoke Electric Steel in Salem Va. to a steel mill (I don't recall the name) in Hamiliton Ont. There the bars were drawn into wire of about ¼" in diameter. This wire and wire from other steel (don't know its origin) was trucked to the Michelin plant near Greenville SC where it was drawn and spun/twisted/coated/etc for use in automobile/truck/industiral tires.

And yes this steel would rust and it wasn't stainless. I know because I saw it. However I don't know if/what has changed since about '94.

On Sun, 10 Dec 2006 09:57:20 +0000, with neither quill nor qualm, Mark Rand quickly quoth:

So, guns, knives, and now -string- are all outlawed in the UK? Wunnerful place, that.

>

Interesting story. There's always an interesting story in there when you dig deep. That's what made researching and writing articles for manufacturing magazines a lot of fun--for 25 years or so.

More on the tire cords: I see that the US association for tire makers (whatever it's called) says "SAE 1070 or better." That fits with what Bekeart says.

So, tire cord is virtually the same thing as music wire ("piano wire"). Music wire is hard-drawn plain-carbon steel, carbon content running from

0.80% to roughly 1.2%.

When I beat the heck out of a set of Michelins a few years ago, sliding corners in a heavy car and exposing the cords, they rusted virtually overnight.

-- Ed Huntress

I tried using that brass plated wire but my customers wanted to differentiate from the imports. They also had a perceived liability problem with customers thinking the brushes were spark-proof.

Actually, that tire cord wire makes fairly good hardware quality brushes. I even looked into ways to cheaply change the color. I still make some brushes from Hard-drawn but the industrial market demands oil-tempered wire. The costs aren't that much more but the margins are much, much better. Oil-tempered wire is a lot harder to work with so we had to design all new equipment. The design just flowed into my brain one afternoon while fishing in the pouring rain in Canada. I'd been trying to figure it out for twenty years. My fishing buds thought I was crazy as I was cutting the bottoms off of beer cases for drawing paper before I lost the idea.

Odd, I would have expected that the steel belted tires would run cooler both because of the higher thermal diffusivity of steel compared to organics.

The patents on both textile-cord and steel-cord radials were held originally by different European companies. Thus, some made steel-belted (notably Michelin) and some made textile-belted (Continental, Pirelli).

They didn't make them that way because one was superior to the other, although each had its advantages. I raced on Pirellis in amateur road racing. They had a reputation for a little smoother breakaway than Michelins, but Michelins also used a harder compound. In later years, the different characteristics have been attributed mostly to compound differences, not to cord differences. High-speed tires (tyres) were made with both types of cords.

-- Ed Huntress