About Zafety Lug Lock®
We Started with a Simple Idea.
How to keep the lug nuts from falling off a vehicle. Simple yet ingenious design reduces the risk of wheel loss by securing adjacent wheel nuts together and minimizing their ability to rotate. Zafety Lug Lock® is a wheel nut retainer — not just a wheel nut indicator.
Ifor (Taffy) Davies, President of Tafcan Consulting Ltd., is the inventor and manufacturer of Zafety Lug Locks®. Taffy felt it was important to focus on the largest vehicles first, as the accidents caused are costlier with damage, potential fines, lawsuits and are often tragic with victim injuries and fatalities.
Other important considerations were to make the device simple and affordable so that it would be easy to use both in the shipping and on the road, and low cost to make it accessible to all companies and organizations.
Tafcan Consulting Ltd. and our Distributors are determined to increase the awareness that there is a solution to wheel nuts coming loose — and how Zafety Lug Lock® can prevent wheel separations and wheel-end damage.
Proprietary Ownership
- Tafcan Consulting Ltd.
- All Trademarks and Patents are owned by Tafcan Consulting Ltd.
- Zafety Lug Lock® is a Patented Product (2014) and a Registered Trademark of Tafcan Consulting Limited.
- Manufactured in an ISO 9001:2008 certified facility in Ontario, Canada, using North American sourced raw materials.
Ifor (Taffy) Davies, President at Tafcan Consulting Ltd., is the inventor and manufacturer of Zafety Lug Lock®.
Taffy felt it was important to focus on the largest vehicles first, as the accidents caused are costlier with damage, potential fines and lawsuits and often tragic with victim injuries and fatalities. Other important considerations were to make the device simple and affordable so that it would be easy to use both in the shipping and on the road and low cost to make it accessible to all companies/organizations.
Product Development
Conception
While Ifor Davies (Taffy), of Tafcan Consulting Ltd., was in discussions with truck drivers, it became apparent that their attention and concerns focused on wheel safety and the fact that there was no satisfactory solution to assist the transportation industry with the reoccurring problem of wheel lug nuts loosening and falling off, causing wheel-off situations.
Drivers were only aware of products that indicated that a nut might be loosening — at the time, no products existed that could actually retain the nuts. Taffy initiated a design process and after many iterations it became apparent that the most practical design would attach to two nuts. Taffy worked with a plastics engineer to determine the most appropriate type of design-engineered plastic to meet all requirements, utilizing injection-molding technology.
Zafety Lug Lock® was in a continuous phase of development for 3 years. The goal was to develop a device that would lock the lug nuts and be superior to anything on the market — the ultimate objective was to create a wheel nut retainer, not just a wheel nut indicator.
Engineering Criteria
Listed below are the initial design criteria — Zafety Lug Lock® meets every one of these specifications.
- Sufficient strength to be installed on a lug nut and sufficient elastic retention to keep it in place under the tremendous centrifugal forces on a spinning wheel rim.
- Retains its strength and elasticity at temperatures as low as −40 °C (−40 °F).
- Fully functional at transient temperatures as high as +120 °C (+248 °F).
- Retains physical characteristics including colour, properties and surface texture for at least 5 years.
- Highly visible.
- Reusable — designed so it can be installed up to 10 times without impairment to the device.
- Installs manually with fingertips — no secondary tooling required.
- Sufficient rigidity and tensile strength to prevent a lug nut from turning within it once installed.
- Inert or resistant to the chemicals it might be exposed to in service (see table below).
Chemical Resistance
| Road Salt | Liquid calcium chloride | Windshield washer alcohols | Radiator fluid |
| Hydraulic fluid | Transmission fluid | Gasoline | Iron oxides |
| Locktite | Diesel fuel | Ethanol alcohol |
Independent Laboratory Tests
Zafety Lug Lock® has been independently tested under extreme temperature, vibration, durability, and torque conditions. All tests were conducted by accredited third-party laboratories.
Zafety Solutions do not have to be expensive or complex!
Zafety Lug Lock® was awarded the 2013 Ernest C. Manning Innovation Award — one of Canada's most prestigious innovation prizes — recognizing the ingenuity and real-world safety impact of the product.
The Manning Awards Foundation has been recognizing and supporting Canadian innovation since 1980. Zafety Lug Lock® was selected from hundreds of entries across all industries.
Learn more about the Manning Awards Foundation →