Undoubtedly, no one in this industry has to work as hard as this man today. There have long been machines for cars and also for trucks including tractors. And such a badly damaged tire like the one shown in the video above would no longer be repaired in our part of the world.

Later in this book, you will see how very heavy lifting is taboo. Of course, there are lifting devices for tires not only in the car factory, but at least for truck wheels in tire dealers. You will even get to know machines for straightening sheet metal rims and cleaning wheels.

As you can see, with wheel is meant a rim with tires, the rim of which is connected to the hub of the wheel suspension by a central nut or several screwss or nuts on wheel studs. Since there are no more spoke rims, the rim has generally been made in one piece, meanwhile also the case with trucks for a long time.

Yes, there are a few very sporty wide rims that can be dismantled into a rim bowl and two halves of the drop center, but once the many screws have been installed and the rim is tight, it is treated like a one-piece for fitting the tire. Not only such rims are made of light metal, like most of them are now, in some cases even on trucks.

The resulting lower unsprung masses don't even play the main role, it's usually about the appearance. At the moment, rim bowls made up of a few spokes in contrasting colors are trendy. If it's exactly not an electric car, the surcharge lists are also full of them for medium-sized cars.

As I said, rims made of rolled steel are becoming more and more rare, and when they are, bashfully covered with ornaments of some kind. Even in winter, many customers don't want to do without the chic of e.g. high-gloss light metal. However, you should pay particular attention to the protection by the use of clear varnish against road salt.

A highlight are rims made of fiber composite materials, often carbon, but extremely expensive. Usually with little or no carbon fiber, they're a bit more common on two-wheelers. After the sometimes special attention when buying, many rims lead a rather unnoticed existence.

If you don't make a special effort in the car wash, it stays that way on this occasion too. Vehicle owners are more likely to be seen with a dry cloth, which of course does not help much in the dirty corners of rims. Rims actually deserve more attention, because this is a very safety-relevant part.

And since they have become a bit wider in relation to the tire, one likes to nudge at something or scratch past it. If the rim material is slightly brittle, e.g. due to the alloy with magnesium, the rims should not only be examined for easily visible damage, but also possibly for signs of breaks.

Fortunately, there are tire pressure checks as a compulsory program that may warn you in advance. Forged rims have better structural conditions and therefore really less mass in relation to stability. Amazing the effort of manufacturers lately to give the rim dish also appearance together with saving of fuel.

But as long as these do not close the wheel protruding or there are different rims on the left and right, claims of this kind seem to serve more advertising purposes. In addition, in certain cases, the brake could report, which needs such air turbulence for cooling.

And what about the tires? You see less and less of them since the rims are outgrowing themselves. With some combinations you wonder how you got the tire onto the rim at all. This is much more difficult with so-called run- flat tires with reinforced sidewalls.

This is a reaction to the omitted spare wheel. Its removal in and of itself wasn't that bad. Even the emergency wheels still offered the possibility of getting to the nearest workshop on their own, which is probably not always guaranteed with breakdown kits.

After all, an emergency or fully-fledged spare wheel can and could still be ordered for a while. But this is slowly becoming difficult because more and more wheel recesses are either being used for other purposes, e.g. for natural gas tanks, or, as with electric cars, are disappearing completely.