Pro Competition welds wheels with strength plus looks by rethinking its technique and selecting Hobart Brothers' Metalloy 76.

Scott Miller, founder of Pro Competition, stands with boxes of his wheels made with Hobart Brothers' Metalloy 76.

Pro Competition Tires and Wheel Co. Inc., Rancho Dominguez, Calif., began manufacturing Xtreme Rock Crawler steel wheels for the offroad sport of rock crawling using an industrystandard technique. Scott Ward, the owner, employed a globular-transfer MIG process, rotating welding machine, and a solid wire that required a gas mixture of 95% Ar and 5% O to place five welds about 2 to 3-in. apart, depending on wheel size. It worked, but his wheels looked like everyone else's.

He decided to increase the wheels' strength by widening the welds that join the hub and rim. However, "We found a lot of spatter on the backside of the wheels. It made it hard for us to make the wheels look good," says Ward. He spent 1 min/wheel in manpower to scrape off spatter before powder-spraying. In addition, Ward knew that his gas mixture was not the lowest cost available. In the end, all the effort made the product more expensive to produce and failed to create the strength-plus-looks differentiation Ward sought.

Ward discovered he could switch to the spray-transfer mode using Hobart Brothers' 0.045-in.-diameter Metalloy 76, a Tri-mark metal cored wire (AWS E70C-6M H4); a less-expensive 90% Ar/10% CO2 mixture; and to eight 3-in. fillet welds.

The impact was immediate. By using eight welds, Ward increased the wheels' strength — they were more resistant to the abuses encountered when rock crawling. Metal cored wires, such as Hobart's Metalloy 76, have cores of various powdered materials surrounded by metal sheaths. They have higher deposition efficiency than solid wire, resulting in faster travel speeds. With increased speed, Ward could add extra welds with only a small increase in arc-on time, and extra time was now available because spatter scraping had been eliminated.

And by switching to metal cored wire, Ar-Co2 gas mixture, and the spray transfer mode, Ward eliminated the spatter created from the solid wire/globular transfer mode combination.

Another advantage gained was that the new gas mixture increased the wire's wetting action and provided a stable conical-shaped arc (as opposed to the narrow large droplets of solid wire), which increased gap-bridging capabilities.

Pro Competition is now making one of the highest quality aftermarket wheels in an industry where looks and strength matter. "We are making some of the toughest and most reliable products in the industry because of Metalloy 76," Ward explains, "and that's just as important as saving time and money for labor."

Hobart Brothers
Troy, Ohio
hobartbrothers.com