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Making a Spare Tire by Wrapping Duct Tape Around a Bare Rim Actually Works

How many rolls, would you guess?

By Rain Noe - July 31, 2018

in Cars

I have learned a lot of useful things on YouTube: How to fix a leaking shower handle, sharpen handplane irons, detach a Husqvarna lawn tractor deck, et cetera. The platform contains many informative and educational videos that I am grateful for.

On the other hand, the platform also contains videos like the following, which are dedicated to answering questions people generally ask when they're drunk. Such as: Is it possible to make a functional spare tire out of just a bare rim lined with lots of duct tape?

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Although the end result was neat to see, I found the video just about unwatchable. Sploid's GIF below contains all you really need to see…

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…particularly since the fellows in the video don't even mention how many rolls it took. (Or maybe they did, during the numerous times I had to fast-forward because I was getting the DC's.) The car appears to be a late'70s/early '80s Toyota, with 12" rims and wheels with overall diameters of roughly 22". While they didn't appear to match the sidewall heights exactly, I am curious as to how many rolls it would take to generate a functional tire. (But not curious enough to sit through every second of this.)

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Tom B

6 years ago

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I'll take one for the team and watch the video for you. Here is my breakdown:

-They say they're going to get 50 rolls but just get as many as the shop has in stock.
-Around the 3 min mark they have the rim spinning and 4 rolls of tape being stuck onto into which is kind of intelligent as it means they get the whole width of the rim done at the same time.
- 3:30 they put the rim onto the car to spin it faster but it just results in the tape breaking under all the torque.
-4:30 moved back to one tape at a time because they couldn't work out how to control multiple tapes - seems like bad problem solving.
-6:00 as the tire gets past the rim they move back to 3 tapes again which seems to work.
-7:30 start taping the sidewall by hand as they want to cover the exposed duct tape layers.
-8:00 first test to see if the tire holds, obviously does
-9:20 first drive on the tire
-9:27 can see the tire from behind, it looks like the profile is a bit flat so its riding on a high spot but it still holds up.
-9:46 first attempt at doing a burnout - tire holds surprisingly well
-10:00 attempt at a controlled burnout - duct tape tire actually stays still whilst other rear tire spins. This could be partly due to the tire being lower profile and therefore more weight is on that side of the car?
-10:30 They get a burnout going on and it holds for a 20 seconds
-11:00 they take a saw to the tire and cut it open allowing you to see the all the layers
-WARNING video ends on an advert for their own vape juice...

TL:DR Skip the video to 8 mins and just watch the last 3 minutes of it to see how well a duct tape tire holds up which is surprisingly well. This is one of those videos where if they had prepared what to do and done it more accurately it could have been better but what they managed to bodge together quickly is actually quite impressive and works well enough to answer the basic question: Yes you can run a duct tape tire.

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Patricio Ortiz

6 years ago

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Another approach on bizarre wheel exploration no one would like to try, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG2mbL4QyZQ&t=232s

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Bobtato Smith

6 years ago

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I don't suppose this would become anyone's daily driver (though it's easy to overestimate folk), but I can imagine various unpleasant failure modes where the "tire" spontaneously shreds / unravels and wraps itself around the axle at highway speeds

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