Tyre armour

Let’s talk about the most significant law in the entire universe. No, it isn’t Newton’s or Einstein’s theories and other laws we read about in high school. It’s something far more significant and it comes from a certain gentleman quite popularly known as ‘Murphy’ whose primary law fills every moment of our existence - “if anything can go wrong, it will.” Apart from extensive scientific research and millions of dollars spent on understanding this very statement, your bread will always land on the buttered side and you’ll always have a traffic jam when you’re late and a flat tyre when you’re dressed up for a meeting or a party. Or when it’s pouring elephants and you don’t have an umbrella, and it’s late at night and you are twenty kilometres from the nearest fuel station and your cellular phone battery has decided to commit suicide when you need it the most. Not a pleasant situation to be in. Even more so if you are of the fairer sex and are stuck with a flat on a desolate road.

Thankfully, Murphy has a challenge of sorts in dealing with a product called Ride-On, which is a Glycol-based tyre sealant that sits in your tyres all the time. One of our team members (the mad one with the driving gloves) used the same product about six years ago in his Esteem which he was quite happy with. The product was imported into India in rather small quantities but oddly enough disappeared from the market – until now. What the product offers is fairly straightforward. This patented Glycol-based solution in an exact quantity (depending on your car’s tyre size) is pumped into your tyre after which you need to drive a few kilometres at very moderate speeds to let the sealant circulate inside the tyre. One must note that this works far better in tubeless tyres than tube-type ones and the newer the tyre the better, since there is less wear. Ideally your tyres should be less than 10,000km old for ideal performance of the product since there will be less structural wear to contend with.

Once it’s in your tyre, it offers a fair degree of protection to about 75% of the tread surface that is in contact with the road. It will not protect the extreme outer tread area or the sidewall – we’ve had the product in one of our cars – a Wagon R running 155/70 R13 tubeless tyres, and have pulled out two nails, after which we’ve driven about 3000km. There has been no air loss and we haven’t had to resort to using the spare tyre. The way it works is quite simple. Let’s say you were to drive over a nail or a sharp object, it would either get embedded in the tyre or puncture it. What Ride-On claims and does, is quite simply seal off the punctured area by filling it immediately and permanently when the puncture takes place while the car is in motion, so you have negligible, if not zero, air loss in the tyre. Because of the composition of the product it also helps the tyres run cooler, which effectively increases tyre life. We’ve also found that it works brilliantly with Nitrogen and there has been a small improvement in ride quality.

Of course, several skeptics do say that it won’t balance on a wheel-balancer machine, which is a fact. It won’t, since the product itself in a way dynamically balances the tyre as it rotates when you drive. So right now, we’ve got the Wagon R running around with Ride-On and Nitrogen and we plan to put to test all the product claims soon. But based on past experience and our recent experience with the product we feel that it is worth the investment you make, which in our case cost us a shade over Rs. 3000/- for the Wagon R’s tyres. It takes about twenty minutes to fill in your tyres from Ride-On’s fully equipped mobile dispensing van which comes to your doorstep. Apart from the fact that there are benefits to using the product in your tyres, it really does bring about some peace of mind when you or your family are out driving. One small step then towards battling Mr. Murphy. Watch this space for further reports as the Wagon R racks up some more kilometres.