No quality inspection has entered the market! Starting from Fenyang, Shanxi, the refurbished tire workshop still uses equipment for old tires with broken steel wires | technology | tires

Old tires with hard injuries are wrapped in several layers of rubber, heated, and patterned before entering the market with a new appearance; The small tire is forcibly inserted into the large tire, claiming to increase its load-bearing capacity several times

Refurbishing old tires was originally a good way to save resources and reduce tire volume, but a reporter from Xinhua Vision found during an investigation in Fenyang City, Shanxi Province that some small workshops refurbished substandard waste tire bodies, with non-standard processes and even no basic quality inspection equipment, resulting in safety hazards for vehicles.

Refurbished tires for heavy-duty vehicles and construction vehicles can be done without quality inspection reports or compliance markings

Fenyang City is a large distribution center for waste tire recycling in China, and the comprehensive utilization of waste tires is a key industry for local development. The reporter recently browsed social media and found a large number of videos selling refurbished tires, all filmed in Fenyang.

In one of the videos, a forklift is loading tires onto the vehicle and prominently marking it in red font with "1400-25 steel wire sleeve top tire lifting"; In another video, there is an advertising banner over one meter long on the delivery truck that reads "Steel wire top tire goods to be shipped nationwide", with an address and phone number printed on it.

Several online sellers have stated that refurbished tires for heavy-duty and construction vehicles can be made at a low price, with an average price of around 500 yuan per tire. Taking heavy-duty truck tires as an example, new tires from regular brands are priced at about 700 yuan per tire, while refurbished tires only cost 400 yuan.

The reporter asked several sellers if there were any quality inspection reports for the refurbished tires, and they all said they did not. A seller said, "If there are problems such as broken tire joints or delamination of tire glue within a month, they can be replaced for free."

The person in charge of a tire refurbishment factory in Shandong introduced that regular manufacturers have quality inspection reports for refurbished tires, and the tires will be marked with the manufacturer and qualified identification code. The manufacturer will provide a factory list to major customers, and small customers will also have corresponding return orders.

A salesperson from a tire refurbishment factory in Guangdong also stated that according to the requirements of the market supervision department, the company needs to cooperate with qualified third-party testing agencies to inspect refurbished tires and provide quality inspection reports to buyers. In addition, the enterprise also establishes traceable production and sales record archives to ensure the quality of products leaving the factory and after-sales service.

In addition, according to the national standard "Refurbished Tires for Trucks" released in 2007, refurbished tires must be marked with the words "RETREAD" or "refurbished", and the number of times and batch number of refurbishments must be indicated. But the reporter asked multiple sellers, and none of their refurbished tires met the relevant markings specified in the national standard.

Old tires with hard injuries are being refurbished, posing safety risks in the processing technology

According to relevant online clues, the reporter went to Yangcheng Town, Fenyang City. In villages such as Shijiabao and Jianxi, recycled waste tires can be seen piled up on the roads and fields of the villages.

The reporter found that there are multiple tire refurbishment workshops in the surrounding villages. Some small workshops have many problems during the process of refurbishing tires.

——Scrap tires with hard injuries are still being used for refurbishment.

According to the regulations of "Refurbished Tires for Trucks", tires with localized wear on the tread and damage to the buffer layer or belt layer should not be used for refurbishment. But the reporter saw at a tire repair workshop in Jianxi Village that multiple tires used for refurbishment were severely damaged, and some even had steel wires with bundles exposed, and multiple parts had already broken.

In a tire refurbishment workshop in Shijiabao Village, the reporter found that the innermost layer of a wide tire of a construction machinery vehicle being refurbished had a circular patch with a diameter of about 10 centimeters, and the airtight layer was significantly damaged.

The industry standard "Refurbished Tires for Construction Machinery" released by the National Development and Reform Commission in 2007 clearly stipulates that the tire body used for refurbishment shall not have damage to the airtight layer. The person in charge of a tire factory said that if the airtightness cannot be guaranteed, it is easy to cause tire bulges and delamination, posing a danger.

——There are safety risks associated with multi-layer full package and "large set small" processes.

The reporter walked into a local tire refurbishment workshop and saw 10 circular refurbishment equipment with a diameter of 2 meters and a height of 1 meter emitting hot air. The pressure gauge pointer showed a pressure of 1.67 megapascals. The old tire is wrapped in multiple layers of rubber and placed in this specific sealed device to be pressurized and heated, and the tire pattern is recast.

According to insiders, this comprehensive renovation method is locally called "Huoluo Model". Several insiders in the tire retreading industry have stated that this retreading method will accelerate rubber aging, causing a decrease in tire mechanical properties such as puncture resistance. Additionally, the thickening of the tire sidewalls will affect heat dissipation, increasing the risk of tire blowouts during high-speed driving.

At another renovation workshop, the reporter also saw a "twin" style renovation, which involves inserting a small tire into a large tire or putting another tire top on the outside of the large tire to achieve the so-called "dual protection". The head of a tire factory told reporters that this refurbishment method not only increases the weight of tires, but also affects heat dissipation and increases the risk of tire blowouts.

It is worrying that these refurbished tire workshops do not have basic quality inspection equipment.

According to the Industry Standard Conditions for Comprehensive Utilization of Waste Tires issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2020, tire refurbishment should establish a stable product quality assurance system, use product quality testing equipment such as nail hole detection and tire inflation pressure detection, and implement full process quality management for refurbished tire products.

However, the reporter visited multiple small workshops and did not find any quality inspection equipment such as nail hole inspection machines and tire inflation pressure inspection machines. "Not only I don't have it, but there aren't any nearby renovation factories. I've been working for many years, and the quality is definitely not a problem," said a workshop owner.

Refurbished tires are prone to accidents, and market supervision should be strengthened

Several tire refurbishment workshop owners have introduced that they can sell one or two thousand refurbished tires per year, mainly through wholesale sales and shipping to other places.

According to local insiders, some refurbished tires even imitate large brands. The reporter found during an interview in a factory that there were some refurbished tires piled up on the site. The tire side brand had 11 English letters, which were very similar to a certain brand, only changing the original "S" in the middle letter to the letter "H".

"A refurbished tire can be one to two hundred yuan cheaper than a new tire, and a semi trailer truck with 12 rear wheels can save more than 1000 yuan per car." A worker at a roadside repair shop in Fenyang City said that some people do not consider safety issues as much as they want to be cheap.

Regarding the regulatory issues regarding the production of refurbished tires in small workshops, the reporter interviewed relevant local departments. The person in charge of the Industry and Information Technology Bureau of Fenyang City, after watching the reporter's interview video, stated that they are not aware of these situations; The relevant person in charge of Yangcheng Town, Fenyang City said that the town government has carried out multiple crackdowns and bans, and the law enforcement method is to require enterprises to self ban according to the notice issued by the town government.

In recent years, refurbished tires have caused multiple traffic accidents, resulting in personnel and property damage. On June 7, 2023, a van overturned at a distance of 502 kilometers on the Shanxi Erguang Expressway. The tire of the vehicle is a covered tire. At high speeds, the top of the tire falls off, ultimately causing the tire to burst and the vehicle to roll over after losing control. It is understood that the driver purchased a set of top tires at a roadside repair shop for 200 yuan without quality inspection reports or other accompanying tire certificates.

In May 2021, there were two consecutive car rollover accidents on the Shanxi North section of the Erguang Expressway for two days, both of which were unilateral accidents caused by tire covering, resulting in one death.

It is understood that market regulatory authorities in multiple regions such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang have carried out special law enforcement inspections on refurbished tires. Multiple interviewees have called for tire refurbishment to be related to public transportation safety, and the role of local authorities, industry institutions, and other parties should be played to strengthen market supervision.