i was watching the news last night ans came across a story on a company called “Ameritire” they make solid yubless airless tires you can literally put a screw into and nothing happens. now i know this will not replace the cusion you get from a Gaz or the stick you get from a luna but for 29ers this might be interesting.
i ordered a sample just to see what it actually is like.
oh and it comes in johnDeer Yellow!
check it out the company’s website is www.ameritire.com
Make sure you post the result of this.
it looks really interestin… but you can’t change the air pressure, and i don’t know if you even could take it off the wheel without harming the tire or the rim…
Sounds a lot like the foam-filled bike tyres (usually orange) that were around in the 1980s. These seemed like a good idea, but felt absolutely horrible to ride on. There were also foam hoops that were supposed to be inserted into a normal tyre instead of an inner tube, but these suffered from similar nasty feel. It would be good if these people have come up with a better solution though.
I’ve ridden an airless tyre on a bike and it was like riding on the rims. My dad used them for a few months but then decided to take them off as they were causing more problems than they solved, loose bolts from being bumped so much, aching arms from vibration and they had really high rolling resistance so they made it slower to get to work. A bunch of people have come up with these and they’ve always been rubbish so far.
I don’t really see the point of it anyway, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be heavier and slower rolling and punctures aren’t a problem on a well set up road unicycle, so you don’t really gain much.
Joe
maybe this is an improvement over the older style of “flatless” tires, but i doubt it. in order to deliver a comfortable ride the tire needs to flex and absorb the minor road shock. this is obviously accomplished with air. Even on a super high pressure track bike, that little bit of cushion would suck to lose.
my assumption is that with no give in the tyre the rim would really start to suffer. though on the news show they had MTB and RoadCouriors try it out and they were all intrigued. the Wreches they showed it to all dissmissed it as somthing that would suck to ride on though witout even riding on it.
the sample i am recieving im sure will be just a smaple peice of the tire not a whole tire. if i had a 29er i would probably pay the 20$ just to test it and well have a john deer yellow tire!
These tires do have air in them, but it’s in the closed-cell foam. Like a tire made out of hard seat foam.
The main two questions are how hard, and how heavy? My guess at the answers is medium-hard, and heavier than a regular tire.
In general when I’ve come across airless tires in the past, they have been aimed at the idea that flats suck. Of course they do, as I can attest after the several-mile walk I took out of my last ride in Auburn.
For people who are more concerned with flats than anything else, these tires should be perfect. For those of us concerned about weight and performance, they will probably not replace what we’ve got.
I have one of those solid foam innertube replacements hanging in my garage. My original intent was to possibly make a half-wheel out of it someday. But there it hangs. More interesting for shows would be a one-and-a-half wheeler, like Jack Halpern’s “150” of 1982. Scroll down this page to see: