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 Trust
the inaugural feature on the Tubeless Revolution in our last
issue has got you guys clamouring for more. In this epistle we focus
on the constructional details of a tubeless tyre which will fundamentally
help us as we motor along the tubeless highway.
It is tragic that we Indians are not the hardiest of adventurous souls who
experiment and adopt new ways to spice up their life, and also to make things
easier on themselves. Though tubeless tyres have been around since the mid
1950s, we only stumbled upon them with the advent in the late 1990s! It's
another matter
that it needed
a high-end premium automobile to set things rolling on this count - a case
repeated often enough abroad as well - but now we need to see the same thought
and product process filtering through lower down the pecking order. Many
car makers and tyre makers blamed bad roads and a lack of education as reasons
for not ushering in tubeless tyres but all that is now changing. It better
because our neighbours in the SAARC nations like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh,
Pakistan and Nepal have been running on tubeless tyres for over a decade,
if not more!
In place of the tube in a normal tyre, the tyre and the rim of the wheel
form an air container in a tubeless tyre. To 'seal in the air', in this
tyre-rim compartment, the inner wall of the tyre is throughly lined with
an impermeable, air-tight membrane. The inner liner of the tubeless tyre
is constructed of halo-butyl/chlorobutyl and other materials. This performs,
in essence, the important chore of substantially reducing the permeation
of air, as compared to the natural rubber inner liner, a function of which
is why we use a butyl tube in a tubed tyre.
A
tubeless tyre also comes with a soft rubber chaffer, distinct from a rubberised
fabric chaffer in a tubed tyre. This works as an all-round air seal between
the tyre and rim.
As there is no tube, and, hence, no tube valve, a specialised valve is
employed for increasing/reducing the air pressure in a tubeless tyre.
The valve (check out the line drawing to see how it mounts) sits on the
tyre rim and is ingeniously sealed by a large high quality rubber seal
which is easy to mount.
As you can see that the tube is integrated in the tyre construction, so
to spead, you also have less weight, helping handling engineers in the
car companies realise the benefits of low unsprung weight. If you drive
a Toyota Qualis or a Mercedes-Benz C, E- or S-Class, or even the stunning
new Ford Mondeo, the benefits of the tubeless rubber they come with would
have passed you by, so good is the feeling. In the next issue we will
look at the advantages of tubeless tyres over conventional tubed tyres,
so stay tuned.
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February 2002
