Desert "balloon" tires

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hey guys!
where im from landcruisers are very popular, the most popular car actually.
the most common mod that we do to the landcruiser is that we change the tires to desert tires.
i dont know the actual name of these tires but we call them balloon tires and foreigners call them desert tires, they are very popular here.
these tires are perfect for desert (sand) driving, especially for sand dunes.
this is because of the lack of tread, i know it does not make sense but somehow it works.
i will attach pictures below, can you guys tell me if the sell these tires in the us?
have you heard of these before?
what it is actually called?
Is it good for the raptor?
 

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I have them in my Nissan patrol and land cruiser 70 series pick up they work great.

i have them in my landcruiser too, they're amazing but i dont know weather they would work great but im not too confident that they would work on the raptor because of the lack of traction and the weight.
anyway i thought that they were illegal in the us?
i have seen baloon tires on a raptor before on a used car resale website
i attached the pics below
 

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zebt66

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i have them in my landcruiser too, they're amazing but i dont know weather they would work great but im not too confident that they would work on the raptor because of the lack of traction and the weight.
anyway i thought that they were illegal in the us?
i have seen baloon tires on a raptor before on a used car resale website
i attached the pics below

I am from Pakistan as well, most of the time I am there for work. I am taking my raptor to Pakistan. Will ship in October! Back and forth all the time!
 

J-train

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Simple to understand why they work when you think about it. Driving in deep sand you want a flat profile on the sand that does not dig in, but rides on top of the sand. Hence the reason AT tires work 10X better than MT tires. You also air down as far as you can to give the most surface area on top of the sand as well. I have never seen anything like those on a truck out at Pismo, that does not mean they would not work. Paddles with those as frunt runners would be sweet though
 

Jordan@Apollo-Optics

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The idea is just like snow shoes. You want to stay on top of the snow (or sand in this case) instead of trudging through it. Flat profiles with no tread accomplishes that.
 
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Ok so i think this thread needs an update... I tried running these tires and my honest review is that it is honestly a game changer for sand off roading, im not so sure about mudding or rock crawling but i took my raptor on a nice trail through the sand dunes. It made the steepest climbs easily and the truck really feels weightless and light when thrashing it around the sand dunes. On the dirt trail it certainly drove better than the bfg's but i felt a lack of traction when making high speed turns and definetly a lack of traction when powering out this is on the dirt trail on the sand its not as bad since the tire really does not dig into the sand but kinda rides on top of the sand as J-Train said.

Now for the down sides, which is mostly limited to street driving. Firstly, these tires are no where near as wide as the bfg and much taller so expect rubbing when fully turning however, I didn't feel the tire hit the fender under full compression.
A study carried out here showed that these tires have less than 15% surface contact while going 60-70 MPH so there's that to worry about.
Brakes are now almost totally useless, this means no high speed driving as if you hard or sudden brake at over 70-80 expect the car to swerve or not stop straight at least, this is not really an issue while off road as stated above these tires don't need traction to work off road as they float atop the sand.
And lastly these tires broke my drive shaft twice.
Keep in mind that my car is around 520WHP and at the time i had 0 suspension/drive train upgrades but there was a huge noticeable difference in 1 and 2 gear acceleration, the truck is really struggling for traction and puts on a smoke show without the least bit of effort, thank god these tires are cheap.
oh and to be fair the drive shaft broke the first time while i was doing a burnout and apparently third gear is the limit...
and the second time i suddenly down shifted and accelerated in a crappy road from 2cnd gear at about 45MPH and the thing just snapped off.

All in all, i have only tried the stock and the bfg tires but i can tell you there is a noticeable improvement off road, these tires are light weight and durable and can differently withstand a lot. (there are videos of people going over 180MPH in these) however I cannot attest to these tires on other surfaces as they are meant for sand.
I would highly recommend trying them out as they are much cheaper than the BFG and work much better on sand.
 

CoronaRaptor

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Ok so i think this thread needs an update... I tried running these tires and my honest review is that it is honestly a game changer for sand off roading, im not so sure about mudding or rock crawling but i took my raptor on a nice trail through the sand dunes. It made the steepest climbs easily and the truck really feels weightless and light when thrashing it around the sand dunes. On the dirt trail it certainly drove better than the bfg's but i felt a lack of traction when making high speed turns and definetly a lack of traction when powering out this is on the dirt trail on the sand its not as bad since the tire really does not dig into the sand but kinda rides on top of the sand as J-Train said.

Now for the down sides, which is mostly limited to street driving. Firstly, these tires are no where near as wide as the bfg and much taller so expect rubbing when fully turning however, I didn't feel the tire hit the fender under full compression.
A study carried out here showed that these tires have less than 15% surface contact while going 60-70 MPH so there's that to worry about.
Brakes are now almost totally useless, this means no high speed driving as if you hard or sudden brake at over 70-80 expect the car to swerve or not stop straight at least, this is not really an issue while off road as stated above these tires don't need traction to work off road as they float atop the sand.
And lastly these tires broke my drive shaft twice.
Keep in mind that my car is around 520WHP and at the time i had 0 suspension/drive train upgrades but there was a huge noticeable difference in 1 and 2 gear acceleration, the truck is really struggling for traction and puts on a smoke show without the least bit of effort, thank god these tires are cheap.
oh and to be fair the drive shaft broke the first time while i was doing a burnout and apparently third gear is the limit...
and the second time i suddenly down shifted and accelerated in a crappy road from 2cnd gear at about 45MPH and the thing just snapped off.

All in all, i have only tried the stock and the bfg tires but i can tell you there is a noticeable improvement off road, these tires are light weight and durable and can differently withstand a lot. (there are videos of people going over 180MPH in these) however I cannot attest to these tires on other surfaces as they are meant for sand.
I would highly recommend trying them out as they are much cheaper than the BFG and work much better on sand.
I could see running these on the front only, but never on the rear, if you were strictly sand driving, I would put paddle tires on the back, no brainer. Takes less than 5 minutes to swap out rear tires for a day at the dunes.
 
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