Can you make a tire out of duct tape?
The answer is yes. Should you? Well, maybe take a look at this video and come to your own conclusions.
The wacky characters at the Life OD YouTube channel were perhaps taking in a little too much of their own vapors and decided to make their own tire out of duct tape. This is what happens when you give kids too much time and a source of income making stupid internet videos.
As an upside, we get to watch these younguns use their brains to engineer a tire out of duct tape. Their first step was, naturally, to get duct tape. A lot of duct tape. Early estimates were 50 rolls, but the small-ish tire found on their old-as-all-get-out Toyota station wagon seemed to make due with a little over 20.
What these kids will do with the rest of that duct tape is unknown as of the time of this writing.
Although these guys seemed to have a full garage at their disposal, making a tire out of duct tape is not a simple task. They started with making a sort of duct tape inner tube by slowly wrapping the inside of a steel rim, eventually getting the bright idea to get multiple rolls going at the same time.
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Once that was done, they moved on to the main event which involved getting the wheel as covered in polyethylene adhesive as humanly possible. They started slow, unrolling just one roll at a time while the Toyota’s rear wheel lazily rotated, but soon they moved on to doing two rolls at a time where appropriate.
Their method became a simple repetition of roll-on a roll of duct tape, smooth it out, and then move on to the next one. Thankfully, the Life OD boys didn’t make us sit through each roll and did the whole time-lapse thing to keep things moving. It looked like it might’ve taken them most of a day to get their little project completed.
Once done, it came time for the duct tape tire to take its maiden voyage. Surprisingly, the tape did not compress and actually performed pretty well and relatively low speeds. It seemed to wobble somewhat, which is to be expected with the inexact nature of its construction, and it likely played hell with handling as it weighed almost twice as much as its opposite, but it worked.
Things got interesting on the burnout test. Initially, the duct tape tire refused to budge, simply having too much grip compared to the regular rubber radial. They managed to get it rotating (presumably by jacking up the other end) and eventually a plume of smoke filled the garage. Tiny bits of plastic were left everywhere to mark the duct tape tire’s passing.
Afterward, they cut the tire off and were surprised to find a solid hunk of plastic rather than the layered tire they initially created. It also cleaned the rim thanks to the adhesive properties.
So there you have it. Yes, you can make a tire out of duct tape. No, you should never make a tire out of duct tape.