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Automotive Tires Without Air
pcman writes "It appears that in 10 years or so Michelin will have an airless tire. They are presenting them at the Paris Auto Show this week. They hope to adapt them for motorcycles, cars and heavier vehicles. They are non-pneumatic and made of elastic. You can read the whole story here. I am very interested and look forward to the day when I don't have to check tire air pressure. It is the 21st century after all."
A lot of off-road equipment already have foam-filled or "airless" tyres.
:
:-)
The difficulty is that you can't adjust the foam compound inside the tyre - once you've filled that tyre and the foam is set that's it. If it's too hard, well, too bad.
The underground mine that I work at trialled some tyres for their light vehicles (toyota utes and such), as we regularly tear up tyres on rocks and sharp objects.
The main problems we found were
Cost - they were AUD600 or so *each*. But they don't go flat, of course
Ride quality- you could tell the vehicles with the foam-filled tyres straight away - they were ABSOLUTELY ROCK SOLID.
Weight - Think about the average volume of a tyre. The tyres on our vehicles were about 60kg each. That's a fair bit more unsprung weight rattling around and loading up your suspension components. The vehicles we trialled them on became noticeably "rattlier" in the suspension over the course of a month. "rattlier" to the point of people saying "what the hell is that noise? Oh , it's just the toyota going by."
They also trialled them on our heavy equipment, but again , they were too hard on the suspension components, even after trying half a dozen different fill compounds. A worrying number of cracks appeared in the bodies of our trial haul trucks as well... so they decided to can that idea.
But hey, you know the relentless march of technology, maybe they'll sort it out. Still think they'd be too heavy for my liking - one of the goals of getting good suspension is to reduce unsprung weight (mag wheels, drilled rotors, etc) and adding another 20kg of extra rubber compound on each wheel aint gonna help.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
First google hit:
http://www.airfreetires.com/
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
BTW, that quote was from TFA...
i de+restaurants
Anyway, some poking around on a search engine led me to this search
http://www.alltheweb.com/search?q=Michelin+Red+Gu
and specifically to the Michelin Red Guide to Restaurants...
It seems that it's not crazy Americans this time, but crazy Europeans... My bad...
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
The points you bring up are for the car enthusiast. The vast majority of people aren't car enthusiasts and want nothing to do with adjusting tire pressure for different conditions.
It's a same to here you say this.
The post wasn't talking about equalizing your tire pressures for neutral cornering, or any orther type of esoteric car enthusiast type of practice.
Those were basic concepts that everyone who drives a car should know.
There's more to driving a car than pushing pedal and turning the wheel, when you're driving a car you are operating a very dangerous, very expensive machine, you SHOULD have some basic concept of how it works.
Whould you use a chainsaw with no more background knowledge than "set it on the wood and pull the trigger"?
Sadly this doesn't seem to be a part of any driver's test that I know about. Here's an example:
THINK FAST:
You gas pedal is stuck to the floor, should you:
A) reach down with your hand and try to pull it up
B) use the brakes to maintain your speed
C) shift your transmission into neutral
D) turn your ignition switch to the "accessory" position
E) Shut off your car by removing the key from the ignition
How many people out there know the correct answer to this question? Do you?
Don't you think this is a basic, necessary, safety-related thing to know?
I was lucky to have good instincts and pick to correct answer when it happened to me, but I would have much rather been taught the answer as part of my written test.
Note:
The answer is D, choose any of the other choices and you can fuck yourself in a hurry.
A) takes your eyes off the road
B) will burn up your brakes, then you have a car with a stuck gas pedal AND no brakes C) will toast your engine by overrevving it E) will kill your engine but will also engage your car's steering wheel lock
(some cars have features which minimize some of these problems)
And finally,
I'll admit it, I consider myself a car enthusiast.
You might claim that makes be biased, but I honestly think the current blatant ignorance of proper automobile operation is a serious safety issue.
Try this go to ANY brake repair shop and ask them how often the get cars in for brake service where the brake pads have been worn down to the point where there is bare metal on metal contact.
You'll find that a lot of drivers out there are blissfully ignorant of the "squealers" on their brake pads, whose entire purpose it to warn the driver before the vehicle becomes unsafe to drive. They just turn up the radio.
I don't expect every driver to know how to change his spark plugs, but every driver SHOULD know all the basic, safety-critical information about their car. It's like operating a gun without knowing how to use the safety, it's just dangerously stupid.
Life is too short to proofread.
In fact, the Michelin guide (where the top french restaurants are rated with stars) was created in the beginning of the 20th century to promote travel via road...and so to use Michelin tires on the early cars.
It was a pure marketing stuff : So you like to dinner in nice restaurants? Check out our guide, check out our road maps, go via michelin (and don't forget to buy our tires).
Today, in France, each yearly release of the Michelin Guide is awaited in fear and anguish by every top restaurant, as the lost or the gain of a star in the rating really impact the yearly number of dinner seats...
I wonder how these new tires would effect the miles per gallon.
Hybrid cars do a a good job of increasing the the MPG. I would hate to see these tire wipe out the gains in efficiency.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne