Awesome Tires

Tuk South trekked into Argentina’s Fiambalá Desert to attempt something oddly satisfying. After climbing the region’s tallest dune, they rolled a dirt bike tire from its peak and let gravity do the rest. The tire’s journey goes on much farther than expected, with a drone perfectly capturing its hypnotic descent the entire way.

If you’ve ever bought new tires for your car, bike, or motorcycle, you’ve probably noticed they have a bunch of little strings sticking out of their treads that look sort of like hairs. TalksWithNoise explains why those things exist, and a couple of other interesting things you probably never knew about new tires, like the meaning of those colored dots and lines.

Rubber is a versatile material and relatively easy to recycle. This video posted by Handmade Heroes shows how it’s possible to recycle rubber to make tennis balls. The process involved shredding the tire and mixing it with a binding agent. After that, he rolled the rubber like dough, shaped it into spheres, and covered the balls with flocking.

Make a fashion statement about your love for off-roading with this tire-inspired ring from Manly Bands. The black zirconium ring features an all-terrain tire tread design on its outside and a smooth interior in black or Cerakote in silver, tan, or army green. While it’s designed for Jeep fans, the logo is subtly placed on the inside of the band.

Garage 54 proves yet again that just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. This time, the Russian auto channel fabricated a set of tires made from thousands of individual nails, then fitted their Mercedes G-Wagen with them to see how it would handle. They provide good grip on snow and ice, but they gather more trash than a Katamari.

After doodling a sketch of a motorized bike that runs on a tank tread, maker Jake Carlini was inspired to build a version of his creation that he could actually ride on. He started by removing the sidewalls from a tire and figured out how to drive it with electric skateboard motors. We love how Jake builds his projects using wood and off-the-shelf hardware.

There are good reasons that vehicles are driven on pneumatic rubber tires. But after seeing a rusty bike wheel wrapped in springs, the guys from Garage 54 thought it would be fun to test the idea by creating a set of tires from thick coil springs. They mounted them on a Mercedes G-Wagon to see if they could improve traction and off-road capabilities.

We stopped counting tires at 19, but it’s possible that this crazy looking homebrew go-kart has more than that. We’re not sure why this guy built such a ridiculous vehicle but it’s entertaining to see him driving around on it. It’s probably has mad oversteer with all of those rear tires so it could be a fun drift machine.

Filling tires with nitrogen instead of air can reduce air loss and boost fuel economy. But filling them with LIQUID nitrogen is an absolutely terrible idea since the stuff comes out of the jug at -320 °F (− 196 °C). That didn’t stop Superkot from trying it out on his Miata. It’s only a matter of minutes before the cryogenic fluid causes the tires to fail spectacularly.

Sitting inside a tire and then rolling it down a hill seems like a really bad idea. That didn’t stop Mikey Leach from doing it anyhow. So he and the guys from Travis Pastrana’s Channel 199 created a three-story high dirt ramp and outfitted a tractor tire with a racing seat and a five-point harness for some degree of safety. Kids, don’t try anything like this at home.

Inspired by the expensive airless tires seen on construction equipment and concept vehicles, The Q set out on a mission to make his own shock-absorbing, puncture-proof bike tires using a similar design. What’s even more impressive is that he built them using only PVC pipe, nuts, bolts, and the tread from a standard bike tire.

All Process of the World takes us inside a Kumho tire factory in Vietnam that cranks out thousands of tires each day. They start with large quantities of rubber and other materials and extrude those into long, flat strips. Then machines cut and mold them around a circular form, apply layers, attach an inflatable structure, then heat-emboss tread patterns.

The TPC Louisiana golf course is home to numerous alligators. Among them is a three-legged beast nicknamed “Tripod.” Blake McFarland was commissioned by Zurich to immortalize the big guy. Like some of his other sculptures, he carved Tripod’s body from foam, cast a fiberglass shell, and covered it with recycled tires.

Blake McFarland is no stranger to making sculptures of animals. He was recently commissioned to build his largest work yet, a life-size bison for the Henry Vilas Zoo. He started by welding the beast’s horns from stainless steel, then used a foam taxidermy form, spray foam, and fiberglass as the structure for its bike tire “fur.”

This wouldn’t be the best use of tennis balls that we’ve seen, but we have to hand it to The Q for his creativity. For no reason other to prove that it could be done, he created a bike tires which never need air because they ride on a cushion of tennis balls. The trickiest part of the build was the rig that crams tennis balls into PVC rings.

These sweet wall-mounted displays are perfect for Hot Wheels and Matchbox car collections. They’re handmade from a recycled tire with a set of wooden slat shelves. They come in 20″, 24″, and 26″ sizes which hold 48, 64, and 75 cars respectively. We especially love the colorful light-up model.