Hub piloted and stud piloted wheels.

In the shops I have worked, we had spares sitting around the shop. If you have two trailers with different hubs, same tire sizes. You would have to two sets of rubber around. One for each style hub.

If he were to switch them to the same style hub, he can get by with one spare in the shop not two.

Last I checked, spare tires/rims ain't cheap.

 

This would make sense if you had all steel wheels and didn't care who's rim you put on the outfit, but most don't. I carry a spare tire that gets mounted on my rims only. I know what they've been thru. Plus I have outer polished wheels and the inners aren't. So by your thinking I'd have to have two spares mounted on rims.

Tires are easy to dismount and mount, only takes about 5 minutes.

 

My Mack is an '01 and has stud-piloted wheels....and I happen to like them now that I've got the problems I was having with 'em worked out. Gotta have the proper inner nuts for the rim types you are using. When I bought the truck (used), it had steel inner wheels and aluminum outer wheels...but the inner nuts had the flange to hold an aluminum inner & outer wheels. Basically, they weren't properly holding the steel inner wheels, which wound up causing a lot of the inner nuts to break. By the time I caught the problem, they had also trashed the flanges on the inner steel wheels....so even the proper inner nuts continued to break. My problems ceased when I replaced the steel inner wheels....haven't had another inner nut break since.

When things work right, it's a pretty good system. One convenience you have with stud piloted wheels that you DON'T have with any other type of wheel is that you can remove the outer wheel without unbolting the inner wheel....in other words, if you've got a problem with an outside tire, you can roll the inside tire onto a 2x4, undo the 10 outer nuts, and pull the outside wheel off the truck.

 

I don't know if I understand why you was breaking nuts? I run inner steel and outer aluminum with no problems. This is with the stud (2 nut, barrel nut and outer nut) setup. But it is nice to roll up on a block of wood for easy changing. Its also nice that the inner nut aligns the wheels unlike the hub pilot wheels.

 

There are 3 different types of inner nuts. One for steel/steel. One for steel/aluminum. One for aluminum/aluminum.

This inner nut has the flange for an aluminum inner wheel:


This inner nut has the flange for a steel inner wheel:


Notice the difference?

The length of the threaded section of the nut is what determines whether it is for a steel outer wheel or aluminum outer wheel....longer threaded section = aluminum outer wheel.

An inner nut designed to hold an aluminum inner wheel will not properly secure a steel inner wheel...which leads to vibrations, which breaks the inner nuts. If the problem persists, it will trash the flanges on the rim so that even once the proper inner nuts are installed, the rim is still not held on securely.

I can't PROVE it, but I'm pretty sure the dealer who sold me my truck had another truck with stud piloted wheels on the lot and 8 steel wheels on the drives....and he swapped the steel outer wheels on that truck with the aluminum inner wheels on the one I bought because the aluminum outer wheels adds more to the value of the one truck than steel inner wheels hurts the value of the other. The original ad I answered claimed the truck had aluminum wheels....then when I showed up to look at it, the salesman "corrected" the ad stating it had steel inner/aluminum outer. Wouldn't have been an issue if they had used the proper inner nuts when they swapped the wheels around.

Like I said, once I got the PROPER inner nuts on there for the rim types I was running and replaced the steel wheels for some that didn't have the flanges trashed by use of improper inner nuts, I haven't had any issues.

 

They didn't know that there was a difference in barrel nuts? You can use the bottom one on any inner wheel but the top one is only for the aluminum.

Now I know why you was having problems! The inner steel wheel was never tight.

 

That extry bit on the top nut is extra threads because aluminum wheels are thicker than steel wheels and you need enough threads to secure it to the hub stud.

Use it on a steel rim and it may bottom out against the hub.

Use the bottom pictured nut on aluminum and you don't have enough threads holding to the hub stud.

The conical face is the same on both.

 

I actually prefer stud pilot wheels over the hub pilot wheels. It is easy to get wheel slightly "off" on hub pilot and the result is the same as an out of round tire. You can buy tools for hub pilot wheels to help but it's still a PITA. Stud pilot wheels go on correctly with out tools or guess work. The inner/outer nut doesn't bother me.

 

we used hub piloted wheels on the snow plows. Had an 02 Sterling Single axle dump. Flat tire. Even an outer on top of it. Would not come off. The senior driver literally had us put the lug nuts back on loose. Took it out to the salt pile and put 4 buckets of salt into that truck before it finally popped loose when you made a turn.