Rennen International Technology

Rennen International is a manufacturer of both forged wheels and low pressure casted wheels. Today, casted aluminum wheels are the standard of the wheel industry. Casted wheels are built by injecting molten metal into a mold containing a cavity in the shape of the desired design of the wheel. After the molten metal dries, a solid piece of metal remains in the shape of the wheel, ready to be finished. Since casting is a solidification process, Rennen International is able to tune the microstructure of the material. Aspects such as grain structure, precipitation and phase transformations can be finely tuned to ensure maximum wheel strength. Once again, Rennen International raises the bar with it's low pressure cast system. Low pressure casting puts pressure on the molten aluminum in the mold which creates a finished product that is denser than a regular casted wheel. Low pressure cast wheels match or exceed the quality of most original equipment aluminum wheels on cars and light trucks. Rennen's low pressure casting process allows Rennen to build wheels with intricate designs and complex structures while keeping up a relatively fast production rate.

Forging is a process of creating rims that uses high pressure dies to press a solid block of billet aluminum into a desired shape. Unlike casting, forging does not require the metal to be heated or melted, both of which weaken the material. Forging creates a finished wheel that is very dense and therefore much stronger than cast wheels, while significantly lighter. Forged wheels are the cream of the crop in the wheel industry but due to the high cost of equipment and long development times, these wheels come at a price significantly higher than their casted counterparts. Each of Rennen's forged wheels are built to order and designed for the customer’s exact car. This allows Rennen to go the extra mile with additional machining to create the perfect wheel for the customer. Custom engraving, wheel lightening, and custom finishes are just a handful of Rennen's capabilities but custom rivet designs, center caps, and bowl cuts are just a handful of the option Rennen International offer the customers. Rennen International manufactures Rennen Forged and Donz Forged wheels in a variety of styles, and due to the flexibility and precision of the manufacturing facility, Rennen can manufacture each style in a 1, 2, or 3 piece design to perfectly suit the customers desire. Rennen's manufacturing team ensures that every customer leaves with a truly custom set of wheels.

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Mickey Thompson's Baja Claw TTC Radial

The new Baja Claw TTC Radial from Mickey Thompson Performance Tires & Wheels is the ultimate extreme, rugged, off-road performance tire with advanced radial construction.

"We've integrated a combination of technologies developed in a real-world setting to make the Baja Claw TTC Radial the ultimate off-road tire," said Ken Warner, VP Sales & Marketing, Mickey Thompson Performance Tires & Wheels. "We will offer the popular 15-inch flotation sizes, and several 16- and 17-inch light truck metric sizes with increased load carrying capacity - perfect for today's off-road vehicles."

The advanced radial construction and strategically placed siping promote durability, long wear and improved traction on wet or icy surfaces. For enhanced puncture resistance and better handling, the Baja Claw TTC has a reinforced PowerPly® three-ply sidewall and directional SideBiters®. For exceptional self cleaning ability in mud and snow, the Baja Claw's got mud scoops placed strategically along the outer tread block elements, asymmetric draft angles and a directional 23-degree tread pattern. The extra wide footprint and added decoupling grooves in the tread allow the tire to flex and conform to irregular surfaces making it ideal for rock crawling.

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Original Article

Truck Trend Magazine Features M/T Big Rig Wheel In SEMA's Top 25

Following a very exciting 2011 SEMA Show, Mickey Thompson's new Classic Big Rig wheel was selected by Truck Trend Magazine as one of SEMA's Top 25 Best New Products for trucks and SUV's. The complete article written by Allyson Harwood and found in the April 2012 issue of Truck Trend, and online here features Truck Trend's favorites.

Do you want the tough "big rig" look of a 10-lug wheel on your six- or eight-lug truck? The Classic Big Rig wheel is a simulated 10-lug wheel designed to fit OE six-lug and eight-lug bolt patterns without the adapters required by conversion type 10-lug wheels. This heavy-duty wheel has a high load rating and comes in popular 20x9 and 20x11 sizes for Ford and GM half-ton pickups, and Ford, GM, and Dodge three quarter-ton and one-ton pickups.

"The new Classic Big Rig wheel offers classic "big rig" styling with heavy-duty construction that performs," said Ken Warner, VP Sales & Marketing, Mickey Thompson Performance Tires & Wheels. "It offers the ultimate style with an embossed, chrome center cap that covers the stock lug nuts."

The Classic Big Rig wheel is scheduled for availability in the first quarter of 2012.

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M/T Sportsman Pro Tire For The Speed Parts Hall Of Fame

The Mickey Thompson Sportsman Pro tire was among five legendary speed parts to be inducted into the Hot Rod Magazine Speed Parts Hall of Fame for 2011. Originally introduced in 1991 as the widest high-performance street legal tire, the Sportsman Pro's specially designed tread, unique "hot and sticky" drag tire compound, and flexible wrinkle wall construction was revolutionary for the time providing Pro Street racers a tire for both on and off the strip.

"We were so pleased that the Sportsman Pro tire was selected for this prestigious recognition," said Ken Warner, VP Sales & Marketing, Mickey Thompson Performance Tires & Wheels. "This tire built the foundation for today's ET Street line, as well as many of our popular ET Drag slicks."

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Mickey Thompson Introduces 19 & 20-Inch ET Street Radial II

Mickey Thompson has just added new 19- and 20-inch sizes to the popular ET Street Radial II line, perfect for new American Muscle car applications. New sizes include P305/35R19 (Part #3723R) and P305/35R20 (Part #3727). The Mickey Thompson ET Street Radial II is a tubeless steel-belted radial with a soft compound and low void directional tread for superior surface contact and incredible traction for straight-line racing. The unique sidewall construction reinforces this tire during fast acceleration, and the impressive tread pattern has been designed with both performance and appearance in mind. The ET Street Radial II is a great choice for modern performance cars that require bigger wheel diameters for brake clearance.

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Mickey Thompson wins Ford award

Mickey Thompson Performance Tires & Wheels reports it is a 2011 Ford Product Excellence Award winner for the 2011 Ford F-250 4x4 Project “Big Rig” that was featured at the 2011 Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show held last week in Las Vegas, Nev.

The award was created to recognize excellence in project vehicle execution. Following Ford Motor Co.’s assessment of all the Ford project vehicles featured at the SEMA Show this year, the Mickey Thompson project truck was selected based upon the following criteria:

* New product development
* Vehicle appearance
* Marketability/fit with the brand 
* Use of automotive aftermarket parts
* Vehicle display 

“The excellence in building this project vehicle provides a benchmark for all aftermarket organizations,” says Brian Nottmeier, director, FNA product planning, Ford. “We thank Mickey Thompson Performance Tires & Wheels for their dedication to the project vehicle program.” 


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Original Article

Market Trends in Tires and Wheels

“The wheel market has been somewhat stagnant for the last two years,” said Myles Kovacs, president and co-founder of DUB magazine and part owner of wheel companies TIS and Dropstars. “It’s been like the fashion industry, which goes retro when it gets stagnant. The old-school musclecar influences have come back. And if you look at the Japanese segment, the Hellaflush trend is returning, with wide rims, deep offsets and really stretched tires.People are looking for clean, aggressive fitments that graduate their vehicles to that next level.”

The off-road and 4x4 category has been one area of significant growth in wheels, but even that part of the industry has seen a movement toward cleaner looks and styles that were in vogue a decade ago.

“The off-road scene is over bling and big wheels,” said Fred Williams, technical editor for Petersen’s 4-Wheel & Off-Road magazine. “A strong, light, rugged 17-in. wheel is perfect for most, and they are available in a variety of bolt patterns, backspacings and locked or unlocked bead styles. Steel wheels will always have a place for the lower-budget off-roader due to their strength, and going fast off-road has spawned an interest in high-quality forged wheels that can take abuse without adding unsprung weight, but that demand is often hindered by cost. A strong, light, carbon-fiber off-road beadlock wheel that can withstand serious abuse would be great to see.”

On the passenger-car side, manufacturers have been seeing increased demand for concave and European designs. First Choice Wheels and Tires has seen this coming and has stocked a new brands such as the Rennen Modular and DONZ.

“Machined faces and combinations with clean styling and lines are very much the heavy trend in passenger-car applications,” said Joe Podiovits, sales manager for Prestige Autotech Corp. “Painted wheels with milled window designs have spurred a dramatic increase in the number of sales and the number of companies now offering these types of finishes. Flat black is still tremendously popular, and wheels with inserts offer a very affordable way to give styling options without the heavy cost of new molds.” Manufacturing costs are one of the areas where the economy has taken a toll in the industry, and finding ways to improve efficiency while reducing weight for better fuel economy are high on the lists of most of the top-flight brands.

“The trend toward forged, spin-forged and rotary-forged wheels continues,” said Wayne Williams. “This process helps create strong wheels with less unsprung weight that provide a quality ride for today’s more sophisticated suspensions. There is also more one-piece construction with a two-piece appearance, providing a more expensive look at a lower price, and more wheel manufacturers are now having ‘blank’ wheels produced overseas to take advantage of lower labor costs and then performing the finish and drilling procedures locally, which greatly assists in inventory management and helps reduce back-order situations.”

Another technology innovation involves a revised finishing process. Prestige Autotech Corp. President and CEO Fenton Leffick said that the Detroit automakers and most of the recreational-vehicle converters are increasingly replacing conventional chrome with physical vapor deposition (PVD), which deposits a thin metal or alloy coating onto the wheel.

“They call it ‘vacuum chrome,’” Leffick said. “Applied properly, it holds up in the winter salt country much better than chrome.”

Podiovits added that, regardless of technology, cast wheels are still the industry sales leader due to cost and will likely remain so, but he said that mono-block forged wheels and multi-piece brands offer the benefit of reduced start-up costs and minimal reduction requirements, so they are gaining popularity with manufacturers.

Williams pointed to social media and the Internet as more-frequently used marketing tools. Wheel and tire manufacturers and retailers benefit from tuning into their customers’ needs and concerns using social media, blogs, forums and websites, they said, offering customers not only information, but also a unique way of becoming part of a company’s planning and design process.

“Wheel manufacturers are reworking their websites and relying more and more on configurators that allow retailers, e-tailers and end users to view wheels on the vehicles they own,” said Williams, who pointed out that the wheel business is not as simple as it once was. “With tire-pressure monitoring systems (TPMS), increased staggered fitments, run-flat tires, specific load ratings and more sensitive suspensions, the wheel business is becoming more and more sophisticated,” he said. “This isn’t the ’90s, where a cheap tire and any 20-in. chrome wheel from China just get slapped onto a Tahoe and away we go. Wheel manufacturers can no longer build thousands of commodity wheels and place them in a warehouse hoping they sell. It’s too easy to guess wrong.”

Tires

Pricing is a unanimous conversational theme among industry tire experts. Serial increases have hindered the market across North America over the past year, and that has created a strain on retailers who are struggling to move even the most basic tires, let alone ultra-high-performance lines.

“The majority of consumers have been locked in on saving money wherever they can,” said Jim Smith, editor of Tire Review magazine. “Consumers are keeping their vehicles longer, so a lot of money is going into basic repairs and maintenance. In fact, there is growing concern that consumers are holding onto their tires a bit too long. With growing tire prices, more and more vehicles are on the road with dodgy tires.”

Kevin Rohlwing, senior vice president of training for the Tire Industry Association (TIA), said that those price increases are directly related to the cost of raw materials and transportation.

“Even though natural rubber prices have dropped to under $2 a pound, it was just $.58 just three years ago and went as high as $2.80 in early 2011,” he said. “When you add in the price of crude oil and the energy to heat the molds, the costs keep going up so that there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight.”

Environmental concerns have coupled with economics to propel the hottest categories in current tire technology, according to most experts.

“All of the tire companies are developing eco tires and lower-rolling-resistance (LRR) tires to reduce their total corporate carbon footprint and improve vehicle fuel economy,” said David E. Zielasko, editor and vice president/publisher of Tire Business magazine. “But they are also anticipating a new federal tire-labeling regulation that will include a fuel-economy rating. The industry is waiting for the final version of the regulation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA].”

Rohlwing said that the industry should also be aware of a recent letter from the NHTSA regarding the interpretation of the “knowingly make inoperative” provision when servicing tires on vehicles that have TPMS. The NHTSA holds that if a TPMS is functioning at the time of an aftermarket tire and wheel purchase, “a service provider would violate the ‘make inoperative’ prohibition of 49 USC 30122(b) by installing new tires and wheels that do not have a functioning TPMS system.”

“It’s important that every tire installer understand that custom tire and wheel packages must include TPMS sensors that will allow the system to operate following installation,” Rohlwing said. “In other words, if the system was working before the new tires and wheels were installed, it must be working after.”

While following those provisions may further elevate service costs, Zielasko also pointed to elevated U.S. tariffs on imported Chinese-made passenger and light-truck tires as contributors to higher prices of entry-level tires. The tariffs currently stand at 29%, he said, so the reduction in Chinese products has been replaced with imports from other Asian countries, such as South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan. The tariffs are scheduled to return to the 4% level in September 2012, which may mitigate that part of the pricing conundrum.

Bob Ulrich, editor of Modern Tire Dealer, said that there is a trend toward selling tires and wheels as a single package, especially over the Internet, and some enthusiasts who buy wheels without also considering the cost of the tires to go with them may experience severe sticker shock.

“There are no more ‘Four for $100’ promotions,” he said. “In fact, you’re lucky if you can get a ‘Four for $400’ deal. Low-end tires are even more expensive, comparatively. Part of the reason is the increase in raw material costs, of course, but domestic manufacturers have greatly reduced low-cost radial production, leaving that end of the market to overseas tire makers. The transportation costs and the tariffs on consumer imports from China add to the price.”

Tire Review’s Smith said that LRRs and touring tires for small SUVs and CUVs are the hottest categories currently. The quickly growing consumer acceptance of those smaller vehicles shows that American drivers want to balance the utility afforded by their old midsize and large SUVs with better fuel economy, and they see LRR tires as an important tool in the battle against rising gas prices.

In the off-road arena, tires are a mainstay for enthusiasts. 4-Wheel & Off-Road’s Williams pointed out that websites and forums allow buyers to share information about what they like or dislike from their tires.

“Though a huge portion of off-road purchases are based on aesthetics, performance cannot be ignored,” he said. “I’ve always felt that you could put big, aggressive tires on any vehicle, and it will look like a 4x4, but the diversity of the off-road market doesn’t have one standout direction in tires. Mud guys are going bigger and bigger. The crossing of rock crawling with desert racing has many rock wheelers looking for extreme traction while surviving high-speed racing to and from the trailhead. Overland or expedition enthusiasts are looking for high-mileage tires that can support added weight, and the daily-driven truck guys are interested in a 35- to 37-in. tire for fullsize trucks with leveling kits, but they still need E load ratings for towing.”

Of course, the Internet communities and research sources that Williams referred to are just as prevalent among other segments.

Retailers must also be highly attuned to the benefits of training, Rohlwing said, because lives are at stake when tires and wheels are installed or serviced.

“TIA is embarking on a 28-city training tour throughout 2012 to educate retailers on the proper procedures for servicing passenger and light-truck tires and wheels as well as TPMS,” he said. “Retailers can send a key employee to a four-day class at a local community or technical college to become a TIA Certified Instructor, which will give the dealership a qualified in-house ‘expert’ to train technicians and establish the procedures for every employee.”


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Original Article