Trial by TRILEX – Coming to Terms with Split Rim Wheels!

In 1973, the Welsh rock band, Budgie, sang about being in the grip of a tyre fitter’s hand.

Part of the soundtrack of my teenage years, I could never have guessed how prophetic this song would become one day, almost half a century later.

The occasion was when chunks of rubber started breaking off the thirty-year-old tyres of our ‘new’ truck, The Beast.

Click on these links to go straight to TRILEX Technical Information and Video of Trilex Wheel Change

Complete novices who buy vintage trucks unseen from the internet must always expect a few privations. The first hint of tyre trouble brewing had come a few weeks previously, when we stepped out of our door one Sunday morning to find two pairs of legs sticking out from underneath The Beast.

They belonged to expert mechanics, Ian and Willie. Once they slid out and introduced themselves, they pointed out many unknown and mysterious features of our new home to we Rookie Truckies. The brooding revelation that was about to come and haunt us was,

“You have split rim wheels, which need to be inflated in a cage. If you get a puncture, no-one will want to change a tyre on those at t’roadside.”

We had never heard of split rim wheels.

We certainly didn’t know we had them!

And we had no idea what trouble this would cause…

For safety reasons, there is now legislation that demands that tyres on the steering wheels of trucks and buses are fewer than 10 years old. At the time, this was not in force. Although she was built in 1990, our truck had only clocked up 4,500 km. Our tyres looked fine, but while the tread was barely worn, the rubber was clearly perished.

Mark and I don’t take chances with safety. We were on tour in the north of England, so we immediately booked an appointment with a truck tyre specialist in nearby Preston, who confirmed they could deal with split rim wheels.

Living the Dream comes in many guises and for me, one sunny Friday in July found me sitting under a tree on an industrial estate for three hours, hiding from the searing heat with four dogs.

I had taken the pups with me to get lunch while Mark oversaw getting our tyres changed. Dogs weren’t allowed inside the café, so I leaned through the doorway and yelled out my order. I lingered over my egg sandwich at a red plastic table outside.

When I returned to the tyre yard an hour later, I expected everything to be done.

“We’re having a bit of a problem…” Mark said, as I handed him his sandwich. I felt what was becoming an all too familiar Beast-related stab of trepidation.

“We haven’t even got the first tyre off the rim.”

The tyre yard smelled of grease, rubber, and hot concrete. Other than a grubby white plastic garden chair in the grimy portakabin that served as an office, there was nowhere to sit and wait. The café was no longer an option. It closed at 2 p.m. and had long since stowed its red plastic seating assets. But opposite the café, I had noticed a tree on the only sliver of green in the grey industrial area.

I had no Kindle and no laptop to keep me occupied. They were both inside The Beast, which was up on a jack. I got strange looks from passing traffic. As working people came and went, they no doubt wondered why a middle-aged lady surrounded by four dogs was perched uncomfortably on a postage stamp of grass at the entrance to an industrial estate, gazing into space.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

We had come to Preston after visiting my mate Ellie, who had posted a picture of The Beast online. One of her friends, Simon, had commented,

‘I used to hate changing those wheels!’

Someone with experience!

I didn’t know Simon from Adam, but latched on to a glimmer of salvation. Bless him, he sent through loads of information and even rang the tyre fitters for me, to explain the process of dismantling the wheel.

After long exchanges with Simon, my mobile phone battery died. I returned to the tyre place at 4 p.m., sure everything would be done now.

I found The Beast sitting proudly with her spare wheel fitted. The rim of the wheel they’d taken off was now in three pieces, but they couldn’t get it back together. Simon had revealed that a specially angled lever, around a metre long, was essential to reassemble the wheel rim.

Dave, the tyre fitter, said he’d try to sort it the following day, on Saturday. We apologised profusely. The last thing you need on a scorching Friday afternoon is a pair of truckin’ idiots with a strange breed of wheel rim. We donated Dave a tenner to buy himself a beer.

Mark and I repaired to a pub for our own much-needed pint. Back in charge of my laptop, I pleaded for help on the Lorry Life Campers UK forum.

By bedtime, I had about twenty responses and was becoming quite the expert on truck tyres.

At the last minute, Simon had added the advice, ‘It’s important to torque the wheel nuts properly, and not with an air gun. Otherwise, when you brake hard, the rim keeps turning and rips off the valve.’ Since Dave used an air gun to fit the spare wheel, this was not comforting news.

Someone mentioned that split-rim wheels are called ‘widow makers’.

‘If they’re not fitted correctly, the metal rim can fly off with enough force to slice a person in half!’ they told me cheerily. So, that was why they needed to be inflated in a cage.

My cousin introduced her best friend, who ran a tyre fitting company in Carlisle. He said, “I can give it a go.”   

I didn’t like the sound of ‘giving it a go’ with a widow maker. When I sent him a photo of our wheels, he rapidly declined.

One helpful soul told me, ‘There’s a miltary truck dealer on the B645 near Silverstone. I’ve seen trucks like yours outside, but I can’t remember their name.’

I doubted anyone had a truck like ours. The British army never used Volvo, and I’d only ever seen one other N10 in my life and that was in Italy. It was worth a shot, but try as I might, I couldn’t find them on Google maps.

Some experienced overland truckers advised, ‘You need to change your wheel rims as soon as possible to a more conventional design.’

Somewhere along the way, I found out our Beast didn’t just have split rims, she had Trilex split rims. While this was good to know, it only made things more complicated.

No one knew what Trilex was.

The following day, Saturday, we had lunch with friends, Siobhan and Pete. They asked about our travel plans.

Everything was in the grip of a tyre fitters hand.

“We were on our way to Scotland,” we replied, “but now, with no spare wheel, if we get a puncture and can’t get the tyre changed, we’re in real trouble.

“We bought a second spare wheel with the truck, because Haynes Build Your Own Overland Camper said carrying two spares was a good idea. Many overlanders carry spares on the cab roof rack, or on the back, but ours weighs 100 kg. Because it’s so heavy, the spare that came with the truck has its own special mount and winch system. There’s no way we could lift a 100 kg spare safely on to the roof or back, plus we the have rear barn doors.

“So, our spare spare is in storage three hundred miles away in Bournemouth! ”

We rang Dave, but the tyre place had closed at lunchtime for the weekend, so we were stuck in Preston until we could retrieve our wheel on Monday.  

The following week, Simon emailed to ask how we were getting on with our tyres.

‘Not too good, Simon!’ I replied. ‘They worked on them over the weekend but can’t get the appropriate lever and couldn’t fit the tyre. If we came to you, is there any chance you could help? If not, we’re going to head back to Bournemouth, as we have another spare wheel stored there. We’re not too keen on touring without a spare, especially when seemingly no-one in the UK knows how to change our tyres! I’ve emailed Volvo to ask whether we can change the wheel rims to something more conventional. There’s also a military base here in Preston, so we thought we might call in to see if they have a mechanic able to help.’

Sadly, Simon replied to say that, although he lived not too far away, in North Wales, he no longer had the special lever or other equipment required to change the tyres.

I’d been busy looking for solutions all weekend, but was feeling despondent. For the first time ever, my optimistic certainty that ‘There’s always a solution’ was heading for defeat.

I contacted all kinds of plant and agricultural tyre fitters. Many raised my hopes by confirming they worked on split rims all the time, but none had a clue when I explained we had Trilex wheels. I emailed the Shuttleworth Collection, a vintage plane and vehicle museum with many specialist engineers and mechanics at their disposal, and posted on various military vehicle forums:

Trilex Split Wheel Rims in the UK – Help Needed!

We have run into trouble trying to get the tyres changed on our Volvo N10, which has Trilex wheel rims – note these are not the normal split rims found on trucks and plant machinery.

Then, I contacted a friend who was a retired army engineer, and the Tank Museum in Dorset, all to no avail.

My search went international.

From Sweden, Volvo responded with characteristic efficiency, but said changing the wheel type would be a complicated and technical feat that would involve new hubs and matching up bolt holes and rim sizes. They couldn’t recommend anyone in the UK to change our tyres, but the Trilex parent company in Holland had a subsidiary, IMS, in Shepshed near Loughborough.

Clearly, we had to add a lever to our burgeoning supply of rescue equipment. We trawled the internet, but couldn’t find one for sale. The dealer in Rotterdam who sold us the truck said they could possibly source one in month or two, at a cost of around three hundred euros, but, post Brexit, importing it into the UK would be a fandangle of epic proportions. In desperation, we might have paid the extortionate cost, but we needed a solution immediately, not in three months.

On YouTube Mark found a video of someone blowing apart a Trilex wheel rim with a bottle jack, but Simon advised us against this!

On Monday morning, we collected the bits of our wheel hub from Dave and set our course south. Dave couldn’t apologise enough, but we felt really guilty, too. He had ordered in expensive tyres and spent many hot hours working on our wheel, but refused to charge us a penny.

In Shepshed, Mike from IMS looked in wonder at our wheels.

“I’ve never seen those before,” he said. “I’ve never even heard of Trilex wheels!”

He was very helpful, though, and agreed to contact the parent company in the Netherlands. The information he sent made us feel better about our Trilex wheels. Suddenly, we realised WHY our truck had them. The Trilex design is genius. The rim splits into three, which allows the tyre to be changed safely at the side of the road with no mechanical assistance. Instead of stretching a tyre around a rim, the three rim sections are reassembled inside the tyre and levered into place. When re inflated, the forces act inwards on the split rim, which avoids all possibilities of widow making.

It seemed ironic that the perfect, no fuss solution to tyre changing was causing us such a headche!

It took us two days to drive back to base in Bournemouth via Shepshed. Once we’d recovered our second spare wheel, we were much happier. But it was only a stay of execution: now we could survive a single puncture.

However, on a sixteen tonne truck, our disintigrating tyres remained a massive worry, and we were only back to square one. We still had to find someone able to change them.

By now, we now knew that Trilex was a popular system on the Continent and in Turkey, but we were still in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic. Maybe we would have to wait until international borders opened and go abroad to get our tyres changed.

Finally, our mate Pete the Roadie came good. He suggested we contact Dave Crouch Military, specialists who have been our truck-related guardian angels ever since.

Immediately, Crouch Military put us in touch with JB Rubber in Corby. After an entire month of Trial by Trilex, I can’t tell you the relief I felt speaking to someone who knew what Trilex was, had the correct tool, and could source tyres for The Beast.

With Corby in our sights, we drove two hundred miles back north. In the height of a summer heatwave, an East Midlands steel town is not most people’s first choice for a mini break, but having our tyres changed turned into a highly entertaining day out. The proprietor, John, was a Liverpudlian with the banter and timing of a stand-up comedian. When he first saw me, a wee wifey as the Scots might say, he opened with,

“So, you’ll be changing these, then?”  

“I’m a northerner!” I retorted. “I’m stronger than I look!”

“You know what they say about northerners?” he replied. “Strong of arm, thick of head…”

John treated us to a Trilex masterclass. He let Mark have a go at changing a tyre and showed us how to repair punctures in our inner tubes. John sent us on our way with all kinds of tyre repair goodies, spare inner tubes, and best of all, he gifted us the special lever we would need to change our own tyres.

With the correct tools and know how, it took 90 seconds to put a new tyre on the rim. The nuts to affix the wheel to the hub are designed to be torqued by hand to 360 nm.

You can watch it for yourself on this video:

Despite our trial by Trilex, we are converts. It is a practical system that is easy to repair in the field. Whatever any experienced overlanders might say, we would not now change our wheel rims to any other system.

Despite the stress, Mark and I agreed we were glad this happened.

We were in the UK, not Outer Mongolia, and if we’d just been able to get our wheels fixed, it wouldn’t have been a learning experience. Now, we had more than an inkling of how to rescue ourselves in an emergency and were all the more self reliant.

Also, we were overwhelmed by how kind and supportive everyone had been. In our quest for information about our wheels, we’d dug up a few other nuggets of advice.

• We needed a thin wall 27 wheel nut thing
• To export a military vehicle to some countries, an End User Certificate is required
• We should change our oil filters every 6 months
• Every 6-8 weeks, we should turn the air filters inside out and blow them out with the compressor
• The radiator grille has wide struts. We were advised to put wire mesh behind the radiator grille to prevent bird strikes from devastating the radiator itself, which would mean a very expensive repair
• Opinion was split on greasing: from every week, every few months, or depending on mileage

Mark decided we needed to get organised.

“We need to draw up a truck maintenance schedule. I’m beginning to see how important it is to keep our nipples greased, our balls polished, and our flanges lubricated.”

Were we at last becoming less green than our truck?!

TRILEX Technical Information

TRILEX Wheel System – SAF Holland Website

Video of Trilex Wheel Change

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