[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Andre

Okay, so what exactly is a flat tire rig?

Tire and wheel validation is very rigorous, as you might expect (and hope). Newly designed tires and/or wheels go through quite a bit of bench testing before they are even allowed on a vehicle or on the Proving Ground road system.

The flat tire rig was used for those situations where a prototype tire style/brand passed the bench testing and was ready to progress to vehicle level testing. However, before it was put on a regular production or development vehicle, it would be put on the flat tire rig and checked for high speed behavior and durability as well as "limit" handling. The rig also had an apparatus that could let air out of the tire to simulate both a slow leak or an instantaneous loss of air (blowout), again to verify the tire's behavior.

After passing this series of tests the tire would be allowed on other vehicles to continue with its general development.

K