New on/off road tires from Continental welcome your worst case scenario
By Tom Jackson
Continental Tire recently debuted two stout new truck tires for severe duty applications at its test track facility near Uvalde, Texas. The new tires showcase several design changes that offer better cut resistance, rock rejection and traction.
The HSC1 (heavy steer construction) and the HDC1 (heavy drive construction.) tires are built with a new rubber compound that fights back against the biggest threat to vocational tires – tread cuts, chips and chunks, and it also reduces the cut depths when damage does occur. Continental did this by increasing the amount of long chain polymers in the tire compounds, says Roger Stansbie, Continental’s director of tire technology for the Americas Commercial Division. These long chain molecules reinforce each other when cut as opposed to short chain polymers that will chip out more easily. The short chain polymers give you less rolling resistance and better fuel efficiency, which is important for highway haul trucks. But damage protection and longer lifecycles are more important to on/off road truck tires.
Tread patterns improve rock rejection and reduce the likelihood that small stones will compromise the casing.
When gravel and small rocks get stuck in the tread they can work their way into the tire’s casing and cause irreversible damage. To combat this Continental devised a tread pattern for the new tires with more lateral lines and larger voids around the tread blocks. The new tread better ejects the intruders and quickly sheds mud and dirt that might otherwise build up in the voids and rob you of the traction you need. The tread pattern also improves impact resistance.
