Airing Down Tires 101

Chili

Explorer
Is it just me or is the text in black over a black background for others too? Had to "select" the text to read.
 

BrandonS

Observer
I've read the theory that exactly mirros what that article what that confirms, but it's one thing to read it and another to actually see the difference.
 

1stDeuce

Explorer
I went to a "mobility" workshop at NATC once. NATC does a lot of the military's mobility work, and they have some really neat tools for rating soils and vehicle mobility. One of the most interesting things we did was to compare two Jeeps in the sand. One had 215/85R16's and the other had 31x10.50's. Believe it or not, at 10psi, the 215 shod jeep was quite a bit more mobile! Really opened my eyes to how well skinny tires can work.

I tend to air down any time I'm offroad. I drop to 15 for a mostly unloaded Jeep, and 20 if I'm running heavy or faster, but the traction and ride quality improvements over street pressure are very noticable. I'm always amazed at people's fear of pushing beads off... It can happen easier at low pressures, but I think a lot of the scare came from the old 16.5" wheels that didn't have any sort of bead retention lip. Modern tire and wheel design is such that shy of abuse or accidents, you're very unlikely to push a bead off. Of course, I don't typically just stand on the stupid pedal and bounce through stuff... If you think driving offroad is about lots of throttle, spinning ties, and bouncing vehicles, you probably should worry about de-beading a tire...

I'll also add that of all the tires I've lost when driving offroad, (5 I think...) NONE of them were aired down, and all lost sidewalls from rocks, sticks, and a big piece of angle iron poking through the sidewall. I have not yet lost a tire offroad when properly aired down, and I've done some horrible things to sidewalls in rocks and deadfall without damage.
Chris
 
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