Beadlocks for Highway and Trails?

[Jeff10]

Hi,

I know that beadlocks are a pretty subjective topic. Every year or so I think about beadlocks to allow for airing down a little bit more in the rocks.

We do mostly off-road with some driving around town and to trail heads with the Bronco. For liability reasons I don't want to take any unnecessary chances.

I realize that most beadlock wheels aren't designed to the same standards as conventional wheels, nor are meet DOT requirements. I just want to check to make sure I'm not overlooking any options.

I know that AEV has a wheel that meets DOT requirements. I think there may be a couple of others, too.

I have also looked into inner Air Locks; but, I can't help but feel that over time they may not be the best choice.

Anyone else struggled with this decision?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[sykanr0ng]

Hutchinson Wheels sells DOT approved beadlocks.
They are not cheap.
Quality seems good though.

 

[JohnJohn]

Many like me run them on the road with no issue at all. I say if you like them, go for it. I have them on both of my Broncos.

 

[Apogee]

I considered the Hutchinsons but went with some Allied Monster's instead. They assembled nice and easy, and I threw in some balancing beads just for giggles, but I'm only running 37's. That said, I have zero miles on the new combination, so not a lot of real world help there. A wheeling friend of mine runs recentered H1 wheels with cut down PVC inserts on his big Bronco with 43" TSL-SX's...heavy as hell, but work great and locks both the inner and outer beads. He added rock rings to the outer lips to protect them from significant damage, and they have seemed to do the trick.

 

[Yeller]

The whole DOT thing is way over rated, all that is required is a weight rating which most that are not welded together have a weight rating on them. As long as your home state allows split rims, and does not have anything to say about bolted together wheels its a mute point (even in another state that doesn't allow them, its federal law). I have run over 20,000 trouble free highway miles with my Racelines. For me its not so much the bead lock as it is the strength of the outside of the rim, I've beat mine hard enough that I would have taco'd a steel wheel or broke/cracked a standard aluminum wheel. IMO what is less of a hazard, a wheel with a strong outer and inner bead area that will take a beating and stay round or become deformed, broken/cracked wheel without a bead lock? I'll take the locked wheel every time.

Now if you really don't need the bead lock (an area you can't) but want the strength, get a Trail Ready or Walker Evans street lock, they are a stout wheel with a standard seat and a bolt on ring without the lock function.

 

[SteveL]

At least with all the manufacturers super glueing nuts to they're rims I doubt you'll get pulled over for it.

 

[sykanr0ng]

At least with all the manufacturers super glueing nuts to they're rims I doubt you'll get pulled over for it.

/\/\ A lot of truth to that.
With all the fakes around you can hide real ones in plain sight.

 

[Yeller]

I also do not run any balancing beads or weights. I've run more sets of tires than I care to think of without any complaints since I switched to good quality radials. Even when the tires get chewed up I don't find the vibrations to be unacceptable, and I'm pretty picky. I probably should clarify as well that the 20k+ miles is just on my bronco, been running bead locks on the street for the last 20 years and can testify that wheel quality is far better today than in the past. For street driving quality aluminum ones are well worth the money, they run true and most clamp the tire on without an airgap between the ring and wheel which eliminates the bolt fatigue issues of the past.

 

[5001craig]

Hey there Jeff. Hope all is well with you and yours.

I'm going with Air Locks http://innerairlock.com/beadlocks/. I even have my tires picked out. Just need to find 15" wide wheels...

 

[Jeff10]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the great thoughts.

I was looking at the Raceline Rock 8 or Daytona steel wheels.

Some of the beadlocks I looked at recently have a maximum pressure rating of 25 psi. I don't see anything on Raceline's site that states what the maximum is for their wheels.

I appreciate the help.

Jeff

 

[Jeff10]

Hi Craig,

Hey there Jeff. Hope all is well with you and yours.

I'm going with Air Locks http://innerairlock.com/beadlocks/. I even have my tires picked out. Just need to find 15" wide wheels...

All is good with us. Hope you're doing good, too. It looked like you had a lot of fun at Silver Lake. I'm impressed with the number of Broncos that were there. I've only been there once, and it wasn't in the Bronco. It would probably be a lot of fun.

I was close to buying a set of Inner Air Locks. I was going to buy them from Scott at Sunfire Offroad. I looked at them again this week. My main concern was how careful the tire shop guys would be when installing them. Also wondering about their life. They definitely have some advantages.

Sounds like you're going to be running some super wide tires.

Take Care,

Jeff

 

[5001craig]

We had an AWESOME time at SLSD. It was very busy with the Veterans Appreciation going on (which we watched and LOVED). Here we were about two miles from the entrance to the dunes. Seemed like a workout for my cooling system (which I thought was perfect).

This guy was running Air Locks and had nothing but praise for them (his rig was bad ass!):

 

[EricLar80]

My view on beadlocks is, although many people run them without issue, they are a bad idea for a street driven vehicle. This does not include the H1 and Hutchinson wheels, which have been extensively designed and tested for reliability.

The worst would be a vehicle that is driven on the freeway on a regular basis. I say this because every time the wheel rotates, the bolt stretches a little and goes through one cycle of fatigue. A 33" tire goes through approximately 306 cycles (rotations) in one mile, or over 1.5 million cycles in just 5000 miles!

Now have a look at the attached graph:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/S-N_curves.PNG

Depending on how much the bolt is loaded (stressed), a piece of steel can fatigue in as little as 10,000 cycles. Obviously different grades of steel have different fatigue life, but you get the point. The graph also suggests that if you last for about 1,000,000 cycles, then the bolt likely will never break because you are below the stress required to cause fatigue... ignoring corrosion and other factors.

All that being said, my suggestion is that you use a spacer ring whenever possible, and follow the recommended torque settings. Not running the ring spacer is just asking for trouble because it encourages over-tightening, and an even larger amplitude during each cycle if the bead ring is not seated correctly. So long as it holds air, no reason not to run the spacer rings.

So, aside from a couple bolts breaking, what's the big deal? The bolts are steel, and they will corrode eventually and likely fail. When one does, the ones next to it will probably also fail because they will now experience higher stress. So, if this happens on the freeway (because that is the most likely place), you can loose all pressure and bead in an instant and end up in a ditch.

Or, they could be fine. I don't know. Let the counter-arguments fly, but note that DOT compliance is NOT mentioned anywhere!

Eric

 

[EricLar80]

Oh, and inner air locks are a very good design - if they fail, you are still safe because you have a tire.

Eric

 

[Yeller]

Having run the inner air locks I WILL NEVER EVER run them again. On the surface they are great but after any extreme high torque event (on or off the street) had to brake all the tires down and re position the unit inside wheel. They would move just enough that we couldn't get air in or out without deflating the lock first was a huge labor intensive, frustrating PITA. Also had issues popping the tubes, they were pretty fragile, even with the Kevlar cover.

 

[Apogee]

...Depending on how much the bolt is loaded (stressed), a piece of steel can fatigue in as little as 10,000 cycles. Obviously different grades of steel have different fatigue life, but you get the point. The graph also suggests that if you last for about 1,000,000 cycles, then the bolt likely will never break because you are below the stress required to cause fatigue... ignoring corrosion and other factors.

I'm not a fastener expert, but I do know that when I've done anlysis on wheel studs in the past with similar loading scenarios, the studs don't see any force at all until you exceed the preload stress. That's the whole point of properly sizing and torquing wheel studs for the application, so that they should never see a cyclically reversing load. Under-torqued wheel studs can and will fail very quickly due to fatique...like in a matter of minutes sometimes, and I imagine beadlock bolts would be similar.

The spacer ring is probably a good idea to reinforce the mating plane(s) between the beadlock ring and wheel if you're running a tire with an exceptionally thick bead, although the Allied steel rings that came with my Monster beadlocks paired with the BFG KM2's, seated up against the wheel without exceeding the suggested torque specs.

 

[EricLar80]

I'm not a fastener expert, but I do know that when I've done anlysis on wheel studs in the past with similar loading scenarios, the studs don't see any force at all until you exceed the preload stress. That's the whole point of properly sizing and torquing wheel studs for the application, so that they should never see a cyclically reversing load. Under-torqued wheel studs can and will fail very quickly due to fatique...like in a matter of minutes sometimes, and I imagine beadlock bolts would be similar.

The spacer ring is probably a good idea to reinforce the mating plane(s) between the beadlock ring and wheel if you're running a tire with an exceptionally thick bead, although the Allied steel rings that came with my Monster beadlocks paired with the BFG KM2's, seated up against the wheel without exceeding the suggested torque specs.

Everything you have said is true. In your example of wheel studs, the proper torque is intended to provide more clamping force than what is applied by the wheel during use, so the bolts never stretch. An issue arises when this is not the case, such as having too small or too few fasteners so the torque setting is not providing enough clamping force to prevent cyclic loading. If wheel studs were 1/4" rather than 1/2", or you only use 2 of the 5 studs, for example. You could properly torque them for their size, but it just wouldn't be enough to be safe in that application.

I would bet that freeway driving causes stresses way above those seen during rock crawling or initial torquing of the bolts. As the tire turns, the rubber flexes and pushes out on those bolts, not to mention the harmonics involved.

You also have to consider corrosion. For a very meticulously maintained rig, such as a Baja race truck, they are great. Especially since tires and bolts are probably changed very often. For a street rig, I am not so sure.

Eric

 

[stlo]

You guys are so overthinking this...... Lol

 

[5001craig]

I listen to Yeller...

 

[EricLar80]

You guys are so overthinking this...... Lol

Posted today:
http://classicbroncos.com/forums/showthread.php?t=270507