Yokohama starts production at third off-road tire plant in India

Tokyo – Yokohama Rubber Co. (YRC) has started production at its third Indian off-road tire manufacturing plant in Visakhapatnam, on the Bay of Bengal.To get more news about off road tires, you can visit gofortunetire.com official website.

Started up at least four months ahead of schedule, the facility is aimed to enable Yokohama Off-Highway Tires (YOHT) "to respond more quickly to expanding global demand for off-road tires," said Yokohama in a statement 18 Aug.

Yokohama began construction work on the $171-million (€146 million) facility in the third quarter of 2020 to support a 1.6-fold expansion project at its production unit in Dahej, in the state of Gujarat.

In its initial production stage, the Visakhapatnam unit will have a daily manufacturing capacity of 69 tonnes in rubber weight.

The daily capacity will be increased to 132 tonnes per day in the second phase, which is scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2024.

Further expansion of the plant’s capacity is under consideration.

Once fully completed, the Visakhapatnam facility will raise Yokohama’s overall production capacity for off-road tires to 548 tonnes (rubber weight) per day.

The plant will be operated by YOHT, a subsidiary that was formed in 2021 and combines Yokohama’s off-road tires business with that of the Alliance Tire Group (ATG).

YOHT operates two other tire facilities in India – the Dahej plant and the Tirunelveli unit in Tamil Nadu.

The three facilities produce three of the group’s core off-highway tire brands – the Alliance, Galaxy and Primex brands – which are used on agricultural, construction, industrial and forestry machinery.

Under its medium-term management plan, Yokohama Transformation 2023（YX2023), Yokohama has positioned off-highway tires as a “growth driver”.

Everything You Need to Know About All-Terrain Tires

If you want to take full advantage of the traction provided by your truck’s four-wheel-drive system, you need to run a tire designed to grip the surfaces you drive on. And if those include both paved and unpaved roads, the tire you’re looking for is an all-terrain. Let me save you a bunch of money, hassle, and headaches, and show you how to find the right one for your specific needs.To get more news about off road tire, you can visit gofortunetire.com official website.

What Is an All-Terrain Tire?
“An all-terrain tire is a jack of all trades, and a master of none,” says Todd Bergeson, the senior manager of product planning at Toyo Tires. Bergeson is responsible for engineering the tires my wife runs on her long-travel Land Cruiser, and he participated in the design of that vehicle—before joining Toyo, Bergeson worked as an engineer and product planner at Toyota. His résumé also includes other well-regarded 4x4s, like the 4Runner TRD Pro and the FJ Cruiser.

What Bergeson is getting at is that, while other tires may outperform all-terrains on snow, dirt, or pavement, nothing else is designed to work as well across all those surfaces.

Compared with a highway tire, an all-terrain tire will be equipped with a stronger bead (a ropelike ring that runs around the inner perimeter of the tire, holding it onto the wheel rim), tougher plies (the panels of steel or fabric mesh that lie under the rubber, adding strength and puncture resistance), as well as a rubber tread that’s thicker and designed to better withstand the cutting, tearing, and deformation caused by off-road surfaces. The pattern of that tread will also be designed to grip loose surfaces, while evacuating water, mud, small rocks, and snow as efficiently as possible.

Unfortunately, all those traits do come with some trade-offs. Compared with a highway tire, an all-terrain tire will be heavier and louder and won’t offer quite as much grip on pavement. Bergeson says that more new vehicles don’t come equipped with all-terrain tires for just those reasons. “Most drivers don’t actually use their 4x4s off-road,” he says. “And they still want their trucks to be competitive with other vehicles.”

Consumers who buy rugged SUVs or pickups with the expectation that they’ll drive like a luxury car or a sports car often dictate the tire choices made by car manufacturers. If you bought an SUV or a pickup truck with the expectation that you’ll be able to use it off-road and in winter weather, you’ll need to change those tires.
What’s the Right Size?
Larger tires will more easily roll over larger obstacles off-road. They also look cool. Unfortunately, larger tires will also reduce a vehicle’s effective gear ratio. As I wrote about at length in an article about people ruining their Tacomas, that can utterly destroy a vehicle’s fuel economy, performance, and off-road capability.
So if you’re switching from the 30.5-inch tire that comes standard on a Tacoma to a 34-inch tire, given the Taco’s 3.91 gears, that will give you a new effective ratio of 3.50 to 1. Your performance will decrease by 11 percent.

Again, using the same Taco example, switching from a 30.5-inch tire to a 34-inch one will reduce engine revolutions at 60 miles per hour from 1,500 to 1,345 revolutions per minute. That’s also an 11 percent difference. Take that into the real world and see how your engine and transmission perform at the different RPMs. Just remember that the effects of altering your final drive ratio with larger tires are compound; while your engine will be operating at lower RPMs at a given road speed, it will also have less power.

Wondering how much height a taller tire will add? Fortunately, that calculation is a lot easier. Simply divide the difference in tire diameters by half, and that will give you the increase in height that changing the tires alone will give you. This can be important in determining whether or not your truck will fit in your garage.

What I can’t give you a formula for is how well a larger tire will fit on your vehicle. For instance, mounting 34-by-10.5-inch BF Goodrich K02’s (which actually measure out at 33 inches) to my Ranger required a two-inch suspension lift, chopping off the wheel-crash bars, and using wheels that spaced the tires outboard. And they still rub at full lock in reverse. Every vehicle and every suspension setup will be different, and the skill of your alignment shop plays a role in tire fitment, too.

The Right Off-Road Tires for Your Crossover

There I was, departing the bucolic 19th century wild west mountain town of Silverton, Colorado, itself already almost 10,000 feet up in the mighty San Juans, on my way even higher. The mountain passes we were aiming for topped out at over 13,000 feet, and the roads were strewn with rocks, many of them sharp. With every little bump of a possibly pointy piece of pumice, I whimpered like a sniveling rodent.To get more news about off road tire, you can visit gofortunetire.com official website.

Because the SUV I was driving was a borrowed vehicle and not something I owned, I was riding on OEM tires which, like all OEM tires, were not designed to meet the needs of rugged off-road explorers, rather the million different parameters that buyers of all vehicles, almost none of which ever go off road, demand: low price, great gas mileage, quiet running, excellent longevity, good grip in both wet and dry conditions, yada, yada, and, finally, yada.

So when the first tire inevitably popped and went flat only about 10 or 15 miles outside of town, and with many long miles still to go (we had all week, after all), I made the correct call to turn around back to Silverton and buy me a new spare.

I hate these tires,” said the young tire specialist at the Silverton Conoco station, eyeing the flat-treaded OE rubber he had just pulled off my borrowed rig. “I get these in here all the time.”

He didn’t so much hate the tires as he hated that they didn’t meet his needs of rugged trail-running. He lived in the mighty San Juans, after all, and up there people went off-road all the time and they liked it. The major OE that had designed, engineered, and built this vehicle—and chose the tires for it—knew that no one would ever take the thing off-road, despite what their own advertisements suggested. So the major OE picked a tire that would be quiet on the highway, would last forever (on the highway), and cost next nothing. The fact that they were not worth much at all out in the high country was something most buyers would never find out.
Of course, having purchased the new spare, from a set of four the Conoco guy had stacked up in the shop, I was therefore guaranteed that I would never have another flat the whole rest of the trip. (And I didn’t.)

I only bring up this whole subject because just about every crossover made today is marketed with beautiful people driving them into the wilderness and having wild adventures with other beautiful people amidst spectacular scenery, all thanks to the capabilities of their crossover utility vehicle. This is true of every manufacturer. But when you check out the tires on those adventure-ready CUVs, they’re almost always made for smooth pavement. Is this dishonest? No, it’s advertising. But you should be aware of what tires you’re rolling on if you ever do set a wheel in the dirt.

“I’ll give the engineering answer here: It depends,” said Brandon Sturgis, product manager for BFGoodrich CUV/SUV/LT/Off-Road Tires. “If you only plan to take your CUV (RAV4, CR-V, or Forester) on a flat, graded, dry, dirt road at slow speeds with no need for extra traction, then the on-road-oriented tires that are very popular for these types of vehicles will suit you just fine. If those roads happen to get a little muddy (which could happen any time), or if they have gravel on them, or if there are elevation changes that require extra traction, or if you happen to climb high enough where you run into snow on the road, you’re going to want a specific tire for your CUV.”