Often had the thought, how come we ended up with uniform wheels that will fit any truck ?
Seems such an unlikely thing to happen
Whats the story on that ?
Manufacturing cost and tyre availabillity perhaps?
Moose:
http://youtu.be/3qopCQSWmpMit was decided many years ago that round ones would be best!
Thats very helpful, thanks 
Because its all based on wheel nut pitch circle diameter.
Eg 385 ( width of tyre “face” ,65 Aspect ratio (width to wall height) but the 22.5 is down to the ratio of Pi.
The pitch circle diameter of the wheel nuts is 7 inches which multiplied by Pi is (nominal) 22.5 inches or 2pi X r
Sorry PCD is 14 inch mixing my radius with my diameter.
Come on Norb you missed that one!
DAFMAD:
Often had the thought, how come we ended up with uniform wheels that will fit any truck ?
Seems such an unlikely thing to happen
Whats the story on that ?
Once upon a time, long, long ago, probably around the time I was born 
Someone, probably Pirelli or Michelin, did a long series of experiments with all sorts of different tyre sizes, looking at rolling resistance, wear rates, load bearing, heat retention, all sorts of other parameters too. After a fair bit of real life testing after that, they came to the conclusion that the best compromise for tyre diameter was the one that almost all of us roll on now. So they spoke to truck builders, who spoke to their wheel suppliers and Bobs yer uncle.
There was still a fairly wide range of wheel fixing stud patterns and even nut designs until about 15-20 years ago. But that seems to have disappeared now.
30 odd years ago, MOD Bedfords had a conical inside face on their wheel nuts and left handed threads on the right side of the truck. That may well have been common throughout the haulage industry, I don’t know. The reason for the left handed threads was that wheel ‘movement’ on the nuts would make them work tighter. So your wheel nuts couldn’t work loose and you’d never lose a wheel. It was rare, but possible for them to work so tight you couldn’t get them loose. I broke an arm off a spider once. The REME mech’s couldn’t get it loose either, so they cut it off. They had the equipment to put a new stud in it though.
Simon:
DAFMAD:
Often had the thought, how come we ended up with uniform wheels that will fit any truck ?
Seems such an unlikely thing to happen
Whats the story on that ?Once upon a time, long, long ago, probably around the time I was born
Someone, probably Pirelli or Michelin, did a long series of experiments with all sorts of different tyre sizes, looking at rolling resistance, wear rates, load bearing, heat retention, all sorts of other parameters too. After a fair bit of real life testing after that, they came to the conclusion that the best compromise for tyre diameter was the one that almost all of us roll on now. So they spoke to truck builders, who spoke to their wheel suppliers and Bobs yer uncle.
There was still a fairly wide range of wheel fixing stud patterns and even nut designs until about 15-20 years ago. But that seems to have disappeared now.
30 odd years ago, MOD Bedfords had a conical inside face on their wheel nuts and left handed threads on the right side of the truck. That may well have been common throughout the haulage industry, I don’t know. The reason for the left handed threads was that wheel ‘movement’ on the nuts would make them work tighter. So your wheel nuts couldn’t work loose and you’d never lose a wheel. It was rare, but possible for them to work so tight you couldn’t get them loose. I broke an arm off a spider once. The REME mech’s couldn’t get it loose either, so they cut it off. They had the equipment to put a new stud in it though.
Now lets talk sense please.
All wheels are now spigotted wheels eg they ride on the hub not the studs.
Had the REME never heard of an oxy accetelene set?
Or did they not trust them with anything hot?
Some Flanged nuts are a little tight but a few seconds with a torch is more than enough to “crack” them
Miltary are at best “amatuer” and I have had the “pleasure” of working with these “experts”
A company I used to work for an “Iveco” main agent put in their advert for mechanics REME mechanics considerd. Tells you something dont it.
Now I know you are going to “knock” this post but these are facts.Nice people but then they have to learn the job and it comes as a great suprise to them that they know sod all.
Had a guy work with me from the army bloody useless but wanted to learn,Worked with me 10 years and he was a pleasure to teach and work with.His words" learnt more in a
week with you than I learned in a year in the army"
And a privelidge to meet the man.
Left handed threads were on the nearside (left)
Luckily commercial vehicles are not yet (except for a bit of bling) designed or bought as fashion/image accessories like cars…though some of the drivers might be getting there.
You’d need a tyre shop the size of an Amazon RDC to hold stock for the array of sizes if it went like cars.
Bking:
Simon:
DAFMAD:
Often had the thought, how come we ended up with uniform wheels that will fit any truck ?
Seems such an unlikely thing to happen
Whats the story on that ?Once upon a time, long, long ago, probably around the time I was born
Someone, probably Pirelli or Michelin, did a long series of experiments with all sorts of different tyre sizes, looking at rolling resistance, wear rates, load bearing, heat retention, all sorts of other parameters too. After a fair bit of real life testing after that, they came to the conclusion that the best compromise for tyre diameter was the one that almost all of us roll on now. So they spoke to truck builders, who spoke to their wheel suppliers and Bobs yer uncle.
There was still a fairly wide range of wheel fixing stud patterns and even nut designs until about 15-20 years ago. But that seems to have disappeared now.
30 odd years ago, MOD Bedfords had a conical inside face on their wheel nuts and left handed threads on the right side of the truck. That may well have been common throughout the haulage industry, I don’t know. The reason for the left handed threads was that wheel ‘movement’ on the nuts would make them work tighter. So your wheel nuts couldn’t work loose and you’d never lose a wheel. It was rare, but possible for them to work so tight you couldn’t get them loose. I broke an arm off a spider once. The REME mech’s couldn’t get it loose either, so they cut it off. They had the equipment to put a new stud in it though.Now lets talk sense please.
All wheels are now spigotted wheels eg they ride on the hub not the studs.
Had the REME never heard of an oxy accetelene set?
Or did they not trust them with anything hot?
Some Flanged nuts are a little tight but a few seconds with a torch is more than enough to “crack” them
Miltary are at best “amatuer” and I have had the “pleasure” of working with these “experts”
A company I used to work for an “Iveco” main agent put in their advert for mechanics REME mechanics considerd. Tells you something dont it.
Now I know you are going to “knock” this post but these are facts.Nice people but then they have to learn the job and it comes as a great suprise to them that they know sod all.
Had a guy work with me from the army bloody useless but wanted to learn,Worked with me 10 years and he was a pleasure to teach and work with.His words" learnt more in a
week with you than I learned in a year in the army"
And a privelidge to meet the man.
Now lets talk sense please.
All wheels are now spigotted wheels eg they ride on the hub not the studs.
Had the REME never heard of an oxy accetelene set?
Or did they not trust them with anything hot?
Some Flanged nuts are a little tight but a few seconds with a torch is more than enough to “crack” them.
peterm:
Left handed threads were on the nearside (left)
Is correct and pointed out my memory lapse. At that time, the system was second nature to me, so I wouldn’t make this error.
Bking, I don’t doubt that you are correct, that a flanged nut can be ‘cracked’ with a bit of heat, I’ve even done it myself. However the wheel nut in question was not a flanged nut, neither was the wheel a spigotted wheel.
As I explained in my post, 30 years (and more) ago, MOD Bedfords used a now obsolete wheel fixing system involving wheel nuts with a conical inside face. I expect they have a proper descriptive name, but I don’t remember it if I ever knew it. Back then I was an army driver, driving army trucks which all used the same type of wheel nut, so it was simply a left or right wheel nut. The wheels rode on these nuts and studs. Due to their threads, these nuts normally self tightened, sometimes becoming so tight they couldn’t be removed. The REME mech tried a bit of heat to ‘crack’ it, then a bit more, and a bit more. It wouldn’t ‘crack’, despite two lads on scaff bars on the spider, one lifting one leaning, until we twisted the leg on the wheel nut out of the spider, so it was cut off with the same gas axe.
It may be beyond your comprehension that you have not experienced every single possible problem. But it’s a fact, you clearly have not, as demonstrated by several of your posts in various threads.
You don’t prove me wrong by telling me a different system can be cracked in a particular way, every time. Yes, that system may well crack every time, but this is a different system and in this case your way didn’t work on it. You have provided further proof that you don’t know everything, compounded by being an ignorant [ZB].
Had a guy work with me from the army bloody useless but wanted to learn,Worked with me 10 years and he was a pleasure to teach and work with.His words" learnt more in a
week with you than I learned in a year in the army"
And a privelidge to meet the man.
I bet it was a privilege for you, someone who reckoned the sun shone out of your arse and said so. I’m impressed 
Bking:
Now I know you are going to “knock” this post but these are facts.
That sentence alone implies everything you’ve posted is a load of horse manure.
First of all, REME mechanics have to go through the same City and Guilds training that any other mechanic has to.
Secondly, there are good ones and there are bad ones just the same as there are anywhere. As a former mechanic (and ex-REME I may add), I’ve lost count of the number of absolute bell ends who work in garages who don’t know their arse from their elbow where I’ve had to tell them what the fault is on my cars and how to fix it and they have never even been in the forces.Certainly when working in my first civvie job in a Nissan main dealers where I had to cut a gearbox off a car after the input shaft and spigot bearing basically welded themselves into the flywheel, they looked on in shock as I took apart the gearbox and replaced the input shaft. I cannot for the life of me understand how someone can call themselves a mechanic yet seemingly be incapable of doing a simple fix on a gearbox. I would hazard a guess that there are probably 10 bell ends to every one decent mechanic in garages. In fact its got to the point where I don’t actually think there are any mechanics working in garages anymore and they’re just what we used to call fitters, they just fit a whole new unit of whatever they hope is what they think the problem is or the computer tells them it is rather than fixing what is actually wrong with the unit. Why change a complete alternator just because the brushes or the bearings are worn?
Finally when you’re working on a restricted range of vehicles you tend to be very good on those and not so clever on others. There’s a reason why ex-REME mechanics do well at Land Rover specialists and why someone who served their apprenticeship and all their time at Ford are crap on Vauxhalls for example.
“cut the gearbox off a car”
And thats miitlary intelligence
FFS are you real!
Conor, was it a typo when you said the bearing was welded into the flywheel ? I ask because bearings are in the back of the crankshaft with the flywheel bolted to the flange on the back of the crank.
Whatever the answer, I agree with you about bking.
The answer is most likely that many truck manufacturers bought in axles from a small number of suppliers.
Same way, compared to cars, lots of brake system components are common as most come from either Wabco or Knorr-Bremse, regardless what truck brand is printed on the box.
Conor:
Bking:
Now I know you are going to “knock” this post but these are facts.That sentence alone implies everything you’ve posted is a load of horse manure.
First of all, REME mechanics have to go through the same City and Guilds training that any other mechanic has to.
Secondly, there are good ones and there are bad ones just the same as there are anywhere. As a former mechanic (and ex-REME I may add), I’ve lost count of the number of absolute bell ends who work in garages who don’t know their arse from their elbow where I’ve had to tell them what the fault is on my cars and how to fix it and they have never even been in the forces.Certainly when working in my first civvie job in a Nissan main dealers where I had to cut a gearbox off a car after the input shaft and spigot bearing basically welded themselves into the flywheel, they looked on in shock as I took apart the gearbox and replaced the input shaft. I cannot for the life of me understand how someone can call themselves a mechanic yet seemingly be incapable of doing a simple fix on a gearbox. I would hazard a guess that there are probably 10 bell ends to every one decent mechanic in garages. In fact its got to the point where I don’t actually think there are any mechanics working in garages anymore and they’re just what we used to call fitters, they just fit a whole new unit of whatever they hope is what they think the problem is or the computer tells them it is rather than fixing what is actually wrong with the unit. Why change a complete alternator just because the brushes or the bearings are worn?
Finally when you’re working on a restricted range of vehicles you tend to be very good on those and not so clever on others. There’s a reason why ex-REME mechanics do well at Land Rover specialists and why someone who served their apprenticeship and all their time at Ford are crap on Vauxhalls for example.
Weird how self-proclaimed great mechanics take their vehicles to garages where bell-ends work and even weirder why they’re taking vehicles to a garage at all if they’re a great mechanic.
peterm:
Conor, was it a typo when you said the bearing was welded into the flywheel ? I ask because bearings are in the back of the crankshaft with the flywheel bolted to the flange on the back of the crank.Whatever the answer, I agree with you about bking.
Spigot bearing is right but still doesn’t totally overpower the underlying ■■■■■■■■ stench.
Ah well at least he didnt go on to tap “u” bolts at a VOSA test station like most of the pratts end up doing.
Bking:
Because its all based on wheel nut pitch circle diameter.
Eg 385 ( width of tyre “face” ,65 Aspect ratio (width to wall height) but the 22.5 is down to the ratio of Pi.The pitch circle diameter of the wheel nuts is 7 inches which multiplied by Pi is (nominal) 22.5 inches or 2pi X r
Complete and utter hogwash. There is no mathematical relationship between the PCD of the wheel nuts and the diameter of the rim (other than the simple fact that the latter must be somewhat larger than the former, in order to accomodate the brakes etc and allow the wheel to be bolted up to the hub). And if it was down to pi, surely the diameter of the rim would be 22", rather than 22.5"? Or have you still not put those batteries in your calculator…?
I said “nominal” so great lord give us your reason for 22.5 prey tell ?
I sit in awe my liege. Enlighten us dear father!!!