What's the deal with the balloon tyres?

[Alphin Aloor]

I recently bought a Y61 and i'm finding my social media algorithms aligning to it now. And i'm exposed to these tyres in the y61 community that can be vaguely described as balloon tyres (Airplane tyres?).

Every since i was a kid, growing up in Dubai, i've always wondered about them. Why do they exist? How are they they better/worse than the favourites (G015, LTX Force, AT2, KO2 etc.)? Pros and cons.

It's a bit hard find name brands on these, but some i've found are:

• Maxxis Desert Maxx / Maxxis 900.17
• Sahara Tyres

 

[Cha]

Came across the same, found this link that explains why.

Note that the balloon tire is not street legal and due to less footprint when inflated, it's not safe onroad

[M.Seidam]

@Alphin Aloor 

thanks for your query .

as far as I know about these kind of tires:

on road : not that safe due to the less rubber grip on asphalt. 
 

off road : these due to its design the require minimal deflation if not at all , but as long as you are moving they are like magic. Once you stop game over even if you deflate them to the maximum limit they won’t help much in self recovery because of the geometry of the grooves on the rubber won’t catch traction and won’t help to grip and crawl. 
 

yesterday I was in pink rock with my son and we came across a LWB y61 driven by local who was stuck and having these balloon tires ( BTW locals they like it and I don’t know why 😄)  .. tried to help him by deflation and attempt self recovery didn’t move 1 mm !!  Even with the def lock . Eventually I pulled him by rope . ( the car was not that badly stuck on semi flat sand ) 

In my opinion for what we do every week these are not suitable tires. 
But could be useful for some one who regularly goes from point A to point B offroad without wanting the extra 2 min deflation !! 

[Zed]

@Alphin Aloor my friend installed it for his Land Cruiser, and I quote his feedback verbatim "no performance, no grip, more popouts"  +  "it's only for the looks" 😂  You can see his Instagram post and message him for more feedbacks. At the end of video, you can see the tires are being subjected to some funky machineries that he said "removed vibrations above 100km/h" 😅 >> https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cm3cuXIhQsK/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link 

[Gaurav]

Sorry for the late entry.

Ballon tire started with Tisamia (means 900 in arabic) 900mm is the height = 35.4 inches since 2002.

Later Sumitomo launched Shaheen in 2012, then a few more companies later on.

They are primarily designed for the soft sand track, climb, and general desert usage with an "UNUSUAL" aspect ratio of up to 85-95 profile - 245/85/R16 to even 245/95/R15. This means when deflated you will have a "SUPER AWESOME" footprint due to a lot of rubber between the rim and sand.

Along with a higher aspect ratio tread is a straight line that enables sand driving and climbing more easily and higher. However due to straight-line treads, self-recovery sucks big time, and cars with balloon tires are sitting duck even on the slightest of stuck.

Yes, they are legal. Yes, they are highly unsafe for the wet road. Yes, they are very tipsy on curves.

[Gaurav]

Out of all the balloon tires I have seen with friends and drove their cars to test, Sumitomo Shaheen stood far safer for the road as they have a tiny bit of grooves in straight line tread that offers reasonable traction for the road.

 

 

Stumble upon a better explanation while searching for balloon tire images