Creepers, mechanic’s stools, utility carts and rolling toolboxes: most of us have them, but few of us pay attention to the one problem they have in common-their wheels. Some may have fancy locking-lever mechanisms, but most are just simple casters with hard plastic or metal wheels. The problem with these wheels is that a stray nut or concrete seam can bring them to a sudden stop or worse, cause them to tip over.
When we visited the Energy Suspension booth at the 2005 SEMA Off Road Expo, we came across one of their slick new products called “Hyper-glide Creeper Wheels”. These medium-soft polyurethane wheels with dual, precision-grade bearings quickly fell into our “Why didn’t we think of that?” category. Not unlike a set of quality rollerblade wheels, these poly rounds are designed to smoothly roll over all the crap you on your garage floor that you conveniently forget to sweep up.
Installation was a snap. All we had to do was drill out the rivets securing the old wheels and screw in the new ones. We had it done in less than fifteen minutes. After installing our Hyper-glide wheels on a mechanic’s stool, we needed to torture-test them with something heavy, so we bribed our new ATV feature editor to be the “Official Product Tester” for our comprehensive, detailed, scientific analysis. The dual bearings allowed our portly tester to roll at supersonic speed, yet smoothly enough that he didn’t spill his libation. We did suffer a high-speed blowout when he rolled off a 3-inch ledge (see video), but we quickly flipped the poly wheel back into its spot with a push of the thumb. (Note: Our less horizontally challenged editors weren’t able to get the wheel to pop off, so we’ll chock this up as a fluke). We also threw down several handfuls of small, medium, and large split washers and rolled over them several times without interruption or hesitation.
The bottom line: these wheels will turn your clunky, unstable creeper, wheeled stool, tool box or utility cart into a smooth riding sport utility vehicle for the garage.
The Test
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