Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Our greatest invention, is ignored, misused, abused, and wasted!
The single invention that made wheels really useful, that John Dunlop invented, is without a doubt the most abused, most ignored, the most misused, and most misunderstood invention, ever. Back in the 1888, John Dunlop put air inside a flexible donut, and made a fortune. The first use was on bicycles! The simple act of encasing pressurized air inside what we call a tyre, made every modern vehicle possible. We simply could not survive without the ‘pneumatic tyre’.Air pressure supports every vehicle. The tyre doesn’t. Take the air out of it, and you have a worthless piece of rubber, steel, and various cords. The air is the secret. And almost every one of you reading this doesn’t use that air affectively.
Racing car drivers do. They know that if they ignore air pressure, they will lose. And so do almost all of you. If you don’t optimize your tyre’s air pressure, you are losing. You’re losing tyre life, tyre traction, braking ability, cornering ability, and you’re destroying your tyres prematurely. And, last time I checked, tyres cost lots of money. Ignore your tyre pressure, and you are losing lot’s of dollars.
But, tyre value is not all you lose. If you can’t stop because your tyres are bouncing, or because only a small portion of your tyre is trying to grip, how much does that accident cost, and your insurance premiums? If your tyres are beating your suspension to death, bouncing off every rock, every bump, every pot hole, how much damage is being done to your suspension bushes, to your shock absorbers, to your springs, to your truck’s chassis, to your truck, and to you, the driver?
A speedway sprint car driver will run a different pressure in each tyre; his left rear may be 3.5 psi. If the track is a bit slow, he may lower his pressure a quarter of a pound. A Bathurst V8 Holden will adjust his tyre pressures up, or down one pound, just to be competitive. A rally driver will change his pressures to suit the road. And you can too, with affordable AIR CTI. Just think, in 2004, the top 10 places in every class of the Paris to Dakar rally had CTI. Last year, they stopped CTI because ‘It was too expensive”. But, AIR CTI isn’t. In fact, you can’t afford to not use AIR CTI.
So, why is tyre air pressure so important? Tyre design is a compromise. The contact patch, the bit of rubber that actually touches the ground, is the Holy Grail. Every tyre engineer’s
Ambition is to have a nice even contact patch, the full width of the tyre, and spread fore and aft in a nice circular or oval shape. Too much air pressure and the edges of the tyre lift off the road. Then, only the center bit of the tyre is touching, and you lose traction, lose tyre life, and suffer from a number of other nasties. Too little air and the contact patch lengthens, the load on the edges increases, deflection increases, and, at speed, this flexing creates heat, which will damage the tyre. Another down side, is the lateral stability is less, the vehicle wallows, floats, doesn’t steer as well, like, well, like driving on a flat tyre. The air pressure must be balanced by the load. And the load must be balanced by the tyre’s air pressure. So, every time you change the load, you must change the tyre pressure, or you are wasting money.
But on gravel roads, or worse, a tyre’s requirements change. If you run correct road pressures, your tyres will be too hard. Extra tyre deformation is needed to absorb the road irregularities, like rocks, and bumps. A too hard tyre will ride on top of every stone, slipping and sliding, like on marbles. If the tyre can conform around the stones, and grab the roadway, traction will significantly improve. Softer tyres, ones with less air pressure, also handle better, as the extra flexibility lets the tyre grip better, hence the ridiculously low tyre pressures that speedway cars use. The extra flexibility also adds suspension articulation, a feature sadly missing on almost all modern trucks. This extra articulation, combined with the extra flexibility provides an amazing amount of extra traction. A standard tandem drive truck, a 6 x 4, with CTI will outperform a 6 x 6 truck, with considerably lower running costs, and significantly lower tare weights. With CTI, a B double will pull out and pass a stuck conventional with only one trailer. Pressures down to 30 psi can double traction on some surfaces. It’s quite awesome.
Added available traction, with tyres on the track, significantly reduces tyre slip, which reduces tyre cuts, wear, uneven wear, punctures, stone damage, pig rooting, axle hop, and the extreme loads they place on your drive train. By absorbing bumps and rocks, and not bouncing off them, impact loads on the suspension and chassis is reduced significantly, actually measured as 1/10th! Hence significantly reduction in suspension and chassis maintenance, cracks, and breakages.
Balancing tyre pressure to the job also reduces our environmental impact. Roads last longer, gravel roads and tracks don’t break up so soon. Pot holes, corrugations, ruts, dust, all are reduced when the correct tyre pressures are used. Corrugations are caused by high pressure tyres, and are actually ironed out by low pressure tyres. Better traction, better ride and handling, combined with better roads, lower your costs, and improve your trip times.
Use of the correct tyre pressure will significantly reduce our impact on the environment. Less rutting, and less road damage reduce the cost of our roads. Less tyre use and longer truck life add up to less cost. This means less waste and damage to our environment. Less silt runoff and less dust reduces our impact on our streams and rivers. CTI benefits our environment.
AIR CTI’s benefits are proven in numerous scientific tests throughout the world, and in real life. AIR CTI is an investment in your future that simply improves every aspect of your operation. You can not afford to not have CTI.
So, why is tyre air pressure so important? Tyre design is a compromise. The contact patch, the bit of rubber that actually touches the ground, is the Holy Grail. Every tyre engineer’s
Ambition is to have a nice even contact patch, the full width of the tyre, and spread fore and aft in a nice circular or oval shape. Too much air pressure and the edges of the tyre lift off the road. Then, only the center bit of the tyre is touching, and you lose traction, lose tyre life, and suffer from a number of other nasties. Too little air and the contact patch lengthens, the load on the edges increases, deflection increases, and, at speed, this flexing creates heat, which will damage the tyre. Another down side, is the lateral stability is less, the vehicle wallows, floats, doesn’t steer as well, like, well, like driving on a flat tyre. The air pressure must be balanced by the load. And the load must be balanced by the tyre’s air pressure. So, every time you change the load, you must change the tyre pressure, or you are wasting money.
But on gravel roads, or worse, a tyre’s requirements change. If you run correct road pressures, your tyres will be too hard. Extra tyre deformation is needed to absorb the road irregularities, like rocks, and bumps. A too hard tyre will ride on top of every stone, slipping and sliding, like on marbles. If the tyre can conform around the stones, and grab the roadway, traction will significantly improve. Softer tyres, ones with less air pressure, also handle better, as the extra flexibility lets the tyre grip better, hence the ridiculously low tyre pressures that speedway cars use. The extra flexibility also adds suspension articulation, a feature sadly missing on almost all modern trucks. This extra articulation, combined with the extra flexibility provides an amazing amount of extra traction. A standard tandem drive truck, a 6 x 4, with CTI will outperform a 6 x 6 truck, with considerably lower running costs, and significantly lower tare weights. With CTI, a B double will pull out and pass a stuck conventional with only one trailer. Pressures down to 30 psi can double traction on some surfaces. It’s quite awesome.
Added available traction, with tyres on the track, significantly reduces tyre slip, which reduces tyre cuts, wear, uneven wear, punctures, stone damage, pig rooting, axle hop, and the extreme loads they place on your drive train. By absorbing bumps and rocks, and not bouncing off them, impact loads on the suspension and chassis is reduced significantly, actually measured as 1/10th! Hence significantly reduction in suspension and chassis maintenance, cracks, and breakages.
Balancing tyre pressure to the job also reduces our environmental impact. Roads last longer, gravel roads and tracks don’t break up so soon. Pot holes, corrugations, ruts, dust, all are reduced when the correct tyre pressures are used. Corrugations are caused by high pressure tyres, and are actually ironed out by low pressure tyres. Better traction, better ride and handling, combined with better roads, lower your costs, and improve your trip times.
Use of the correct tyre pressure will significantly reduce our impact on the environment. Less rutting, and less road damage reduce the cost of our roads. Less tyre use and longer truck life add up to less cost. This means less waste and damage to our environment. Less silt runoff and less dust reduces our impact on our streams and rivers. CTI benefits our environment.
AIR CTI’s benefits are proven in numerous scientific tests throughout the world, and in real life. AIR CTI is an investment in your future that simply improves every aspect of your operation. You can not afford to not have CTI.
