Tire Mousse

[ADias]

Watching the WRC - Rally de France - this evening on the Speed channel, they showed a new light donut insert, which pretty much fills the space between the tire and the rim. They still pressure it w/ a bit of air, but not much and this - they called it mousse - donut attaches radially to the tire and eliminates the effects of punctures, etc. It seemed to be a very light material, and if this is true, it may be a better solutin than the heavier run-flats?

Anybody know about this?

[ADias]

No opinions on this? I did a little research and found that tire manufacturers (Michelin) are indeed supplying these inserts for rally cars and off-road vehicles.

The idea makes sense and in particular for our high performance tires which are paper thin. Actually, instead of a separate insert they might consider adding a super-light thick layer to add to the overall tickness. Imagine a tire that has almost no air chamber. That would pretty much resolve any puncture issue.

[Hroussard]

Yes, I saw that on Speed last night and I noticed that they had a special piece of equipment to "insert" the donut into the tire. It looked to me as if that could not be done manually. So until and unless the Tire Racks of the world buy this equipment we are SOL. BTW. On Speed, also last night, I also saw a nice piece of driving in the new Boxter, the guy spun it once , he smoked the tires so much I bet there was nothing left at the end of that driving test...Need to tell you that the Boxter was doing very nice. They also showed ( briefly) a yellow GT3 tearing around the track. Impressive.

HarryR C2 1999

[threeOh]

Just got back from prepping an El-Chott car on its way from Switzerland to Tunisia. We used inserts (forget brand, made in Australia).

They are not light. They require a hole drilled into the rim for the new air valve. They are an absolute pain to install and you won't want to see what your rims look like after the install.

So far after 7 days they appear to working just fine and allow us to be more aggressive in the sand.

I'd rather have a flat in the middle of nowhere than put these on a P.