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Old 06-11-2008, 09:58 PM   #123 (permalink)
cfg83
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trikkonceptz -

Here's another one :

TwinTire
http://www.carbibles.com/tyre_bible.html

Quote:
This was an idea from the USA based on the twin tyres used in Western Australia on their police vehicles. It's long been the practice for closed-wheel racing cars, such as NASCAR vehicles, to use two inner tubes inside each tyre, allowing for different pressures inside the same tyre. They also allow for proper run-flat puncture capability. TwinTires tried putting the same principle into effect for those of us with road-going cars. Their system used specially designed wheel rims to go with their own unique type of tyres. Each wheel rim was actually molded as two half-width rims joined together. The TwinTires tyres then fitted those double rims. Effectively, you got two independent tyres per wheel, each with their own inner tube or tubeless pressure. The most obvious advantage of this system was that it was an almost failsafe puncture proof tyre. As most punctures are caused by single objects entering the tyre at a single point, with this system, only one tyre would deflate, leaving the other untouched so that your vehicle was still controllable. TwinTires claimed a reduction in braking distance too, typically from 150ft down to 120ft when braking from a fixed 70mph. The other advantage was that the system was effectively an evolution of the Aquatread type single tyres that can be bought over the counter. In the dry, you had more or less the same contact area as a normal tyre. In the wet, most of the water was channeled into the gap between the two tyres leaving (supposedly) a much more efficient wet contact patch. History is cruel to those who buck the trend, and as it turned out this system was just a passing fad. Their products disappeared around 2001 and the website vanished shortly thereafter. I've not seen any trace of them since. Daunltess Motor Corp are the last remaining suppliers and they have all the remaining stock.
For an independent opinion on TwinTyre systems from someone who used them avidly, have a read of his e-mail to me which has a lot of information in it.
Like Frank says, I don't think this was for LRR, it was for traction and increased puncture proofing.

CarloSW2
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