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Siemens VDO Brings Piezo TPMS Technology to IAA

While many attended the IAA in Frankfurt to admire the crisp styling of the latest vehicle models and concept cars, for others the technology lying beneath the skin of a car is every bit as beautiful. To satisfy the cravings of these technophiles, a number of companies chose the motor show as a venue for showing off tomorrow’s standard features.

Amongst these was Siemens VDO, who brought its next generation, battery free piezo element tyre pressure monitoring system to Frankfurt. Integrating the sensor, communications system, identification electronics and processing in a single module located directly in the tyre, the Intelligent Tire System (ITS) automatically detects tyre data and transfers the data to the system controls. When necessary, the driver receives critical tyre information, such as the tyre pressure and the vehicle’s load status. To support the optimised functioning of these systems, important tyre status information also can be transmitted to other electronic vehicle systems, such as the braking assistant, stability control, or the drive control system.

20th September 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

Hennessy Unveils New Coats 1250-3DV Balancer

(Akron/Tire Review) Hennessy Industries has introduced the Coats 1250-3DV wheel balancer, which it says will help shops increase profits by streamlining operations and providing self-training capabilities. “Today’s new vehicles have larger wheels and special applications that are difficult to service with older balancers,” said Don Vanderheyden, Hennessy’s group marketing manager. “In addition, the increased use of hidden tape-weight balancing demands newer technology and custom balancing techniques. The 1250-3DV was designed to help address those issues.”

11th September 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

US-China to Sign Quick Recall Pact

(Akron/Tire Review) NHTSA and the Chinese government will sign an agreement Sept. 12 that will help speed the recall of defective auto parts. The “memorandum of cooperation” gives NHTSA a tool to speed recalls of Chinese-made goods. If the agreement had been in place this summer when concerns arose about the tires, “we would have felt much more comfortable reaching out to the Chinese government and asking for their assistance,” said Nicole Nason, NHTSA administrator.

11th September 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

ATS Euromaster Wins 160 Vehicle Council Contract

ATS Euromaster has secured a contract with Lancaster City Council to supply Michelin tyres and provide related service to the council’s 160 vehicle fleet. The three-year deal includes tyres for a mixed bag of vehicles ranging in size from lawn mowers through to refuse and recycling collection trucks.

“The varied nature of our fleet means that a fully managed approach like this is key to delivering best value for money for the taxpayer,” commented Graham Powell, fleet manager for Lancaster City Council. “ATS Euromaster and Michelin are also committed to ensuring that tyre-related downtime is kept to an absolute minimum, and helping the Council to achieve additional cost savings by maximising the performance and life of every tyre on the fleet. Selecting a partner with the skills to support our wide-ranging fleet was also crucial, with ATS Euromaster technicians as proficient at servicing the tyres on some of our more unusual pieces of equipment as they are on regular cars and trucks.”

17th August 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Cooperating with NHTSA

Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. (HZR) has issued a statement detail its “ongoing cooperation” with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), following the news that some of its pickup truck sizes are being recalled in the US. According to the statement, HZR has provided the agency with more details and data showing that its LTR tyres sold in the United States are safe. “HZR has a long record of producing high quality, safe and reliable products. Because of this commitment to our customers, HZR continues to collect and share information that it believes offers clarity regarding the quality of HZR tyres,” the statement continued.

The Chinese manufacturer, the second largest in the People’s Republic, also cast doubt on the thoroughness of the allegations made against it. “HZR takes the allegations made by Foreign Tire Sales Inc. (FTS) very seriously. FTS submitted a defect report to NHTSA even though FTS lacked the necessary data to make an informed conclusion about the safety of the tyres. We will continue to provide NHTSA with information needed to make a more accurate assessment about the quality and safety of the tyres,” the statement concluded.

According to HZR, “many” tyre distributors have stepped forward to extol the quality and durability of HZR tyres.

6th August 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

ASA Offers Updated TireMaster Software

(Akron/Tire Review) ASA Tire Systems has issued Version 7.4.0 of its TireMaster software. ASA said the new version of its tyre dealer POS software provides increased functionality, including a “promised time” indicator, global comments for quotes, and a tyre casings/parts core tracking system. ASA said that current TireMaster users with an Internet connection can receive the update immediately.

Mark Goin, ASA Tire Systems director of sales and marketing, said: “The new promised time indicator will be a great tool to manage a shop’s busy workload. This feature allows tyre dealers to set a ‘promised time’ for each job. If the job takes longer than expected, they will know to contact the customer immediately. This new element improves customer service, while helping to manage a tyre dealer’s daily workload.”

In addition, the casing/core tracking system, he said, allows dealers to track casings sent to a retreader, record cost information and data about repairs and service life.

11th July 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

Advanced ID – Minimising the Impact of Recalls

Advanced ID Corporation has reported receiving numerous inquiries regarding the US Chinese tyre recall, and the company believes the use of its tyre tags could have reduced the severity of the recall. Important tyre data, including batch number and date of manufacture, can be stored within an Advanced ID RFID tag or in a customer controlled database, making the correct identification of tyre a much simpler procedure. Advanced ID point out that the numerous UPC barcodes to be found on tyres did not contain the historical information required to pinpoint which specific tyres were manufactured using the process in question during the current recall, and thus thousands of tyres must be considered suspect when it is possible that only a very small number of tyres are actually affected.

Dan Finch, president and CEO of Advanced ID, said, “Advanced ID has been working with the major tyre manufacturers around the world for almost two years to develop an RFID tyre tag that provides a life-of-tyre unique tyre ID number. The ability to keep track of individual tyres becomes increasingly important as a tool to minimise recall issues and provide enhanced fleet management and tyre security capabilities with the added benefit of improved asset management.”

9th July 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

John Bean Alignments V3D Makes Alignment ‘Child’s Play’

John Bean, a brand within Snap-on Equipment, has introduced a new easy-to-use wheel alignment system that offers the accuracy of 3D digital imaging technology for just over £7,000 – the same price as a conventional close-coupled device (CCD) aligner.

V3D Lite enables vehicle set up and alignment readings to be taken in under two-minutes through a simple process that automatically guides the technician with clear instructions and easily understood colour graphics. The operator has only to enter basic data, mount a robust acrylic target on each wheel and roll the car backwards and forwards a short distance to obtain a detailed and accurate reading. 3D modelling also ensures that alignment results are not compromised by the non-measurement of wheel run-out promoted by some manufacturers.

V3D Lite enables the customer to use an existing lift and empowers a greater number of workshops to gain a new or improved revenue stream alongside their core business. The PC-based system also features a colour printer, allowing detailed pre- and post- alignment reports to be presented to the consumer. Records are also stored and updated on the system, providing a full audit trail for all checks carried out.

26th June 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

Kwik-Fit Fleet Launches ‘Intelligent’ Online Tyre Management

Kwik-Fit Fleet has launched a new web-based ‘intelligent’ tyre management authorisation and reporting system, which is being rolled out to Britain’s biggest fleet operators. About 50 companies managing more 1.3 million vehicles, including Britain’s largest fleet, Motability Operations which runs around 450,000 vehicles, and the country’s largest contract hire business, Lex which has a fleet of almost 270,000 vehicles, will benefit from the technology.

For the past decade Kwik-Fit Fleet’s tyre management programme has been utilised by some of Britain’s biggest outright purchase fleets and leasing companies to control their tyre maintenance spend. Details of all transactions are logged and information on tread depths of tyres removed, brands and size of tyres fitted, mileage of vehicle at time of replacement and the reason for tyre replacement are all captured by Kwik Fit on behalf of customers.

22nd June 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

Digital ePen to ‘Revolutionise’ Offsite Data Transfer

An innovative new way of turning hand written paperwork into electronically transmittable data is set to transform the way in which tyre businesses process information from mobile technicians and other remote workers. Using state-of-the-art hardware, experts at Cam Systems have developed an affordable electronic ballpoint ink pen, which allows a workforce to capture information on paper at one location and transmit it via a Bluetooth enabled device, to another.

The so-called Cam-ePen system is expected to be particularly popular with tyre dealers providing on-site service and roadside breakdown assistance. It will also play an important role in capturing workshop records and job cards or timesheets, in fact practically anything that is currently being documented on paper can be adapted. It means paperwork based reports and signature authorizations can be completed instantly with real time data exchange linked to a central data management system.

22nd June 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

IRSG: Rubber Consumption to Reach 32 Million Tons by 2020

The International Rubber Study Group (IRSG) reported during the World Rubber Summit last month in Bangkok that world rubber consumption is now forecast to reach 31.8 million tons by 2020, representing an increase of around 10 million tons compared to 2006. The IRSG underscored the importance of developing better statistics and forecasts. “Industry is in serious need for improved data, but it is increasingly difficult to obtain and derive such statistics,” IRSG officials said. They called on all stakeholders to cooperate with the Group in developing innovative ways to obtain better statistics on all aspects of the rubber industry.

18th June 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

SmarTire Signs With John Deere

SmarTire Systems Inc. has announced that it has signed an agreement to supply its SmartWave tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS) to Deere&Company, maker of the well-known John Deere vehicles. “We’re very pleased to be working with Deere&Company, a leading global manufacturer of vehicles in the construction, mining and forestry sectors,” SmarTire CEO Dave Warkentin said.

“The off-road (OTR) market is a key part of our business strategy and we believe that our agreement to supply Deere&Company is a major step forward in our effort to penetrate the OEM segment of that market. We are excited that the engineering phase has been successfully completed and expect production to begin soon.”

15th June 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

SmartWave TPMS Made Available for Retrofitting

In May the commercial vehicle systems group of Dana Corporation announced that it had begun to make its SmartWave tyre pressure monitoring system available for retrofit installation on a number of commercial vehicle models. The product of an agreement between Dana Corporation and SmarTire Systems, the SmartWave system was first fitted to new vehicles in February 2006.

“SmartWave TPMS is simple to install and will reduce two top operating expenses for fleets – fuel and tyres. Easily accessible tyre pressure data will provide fleets the opportunity to maximise both fuel economy and tyre life by maintaining proper tyre pressure,” said Jon Intagliata, product manager for Dana. “The SmartWave TPMS system can also communicate to off-board communications systems utilising the J1939 data link, allowing fleets to capture important real-time pressure and temperature data to provide proactive maintenance and help eliminate costly roadside tyre failures.”

4th June 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

Introducing Autocat+ v4.0

MAM Software has launched Autocat+ v4.0, the next major release of its electronic parts cataloguing software for motor factors, accessory retailers and parts distributors. This introduces a number of significant enhancements to the application and further extends its functionality.

This latest version of Autocat+ is designed to run at a larger screen resolution of 1024px by 768px. This enables the software to display more information on the screen at any one time and has removed the need for scroll bars on some of the controls. As a result, the main parts grid now displays new fields including fuel type, body type, engine capacity, cylinders, cam, valve and transmission.

The introduction of new data columns gives users more fields on which to filter data. Combined with new progressive searching routines, Autocat+ v4 helps users to quickly and easily drill down data to find a match. With more information to search on, parts lookups are more accurate, increasing the likelihood of achieving ‘first-time-fit’.

24th May 2007/by Tyrepress Editors

Goodyear Signs Two OTR Supply Contracts

Goodyear OTR has renegotiated major contracts with Southampton Containers (part of the Dubai Ports Group) and Tilbury Container Services – to supply Goodyear EV-4A and EV-4S for Straddle Carriers. Straddle Carriers are the machines that load containers from the Port onto road going trucks. The contracts mean that Goodyear supplies over 75 per cent of the tyre requirements to Southampton Containers and also provide tyre performance data on 100 Straddle Carriers used at the Port. Tilbury Containers Services have over 40 machines on their site and all run on Goodyear’s range of EV tyres.

21st May 2007/by Tyrepress Editors