Getting the proper set of tires is a vital a part of what goes into constructing an armored vehicle, and firms like Hutchinson and Tyron will be a wonderful place to get those run-flats. But have you ever ever wondered how a daily retail tire would get up to the impact of a bullet? In any case, the standard tire is made, partially, of actual steel belts, and certain sorts of steel are used for bulletproofing. Plus, some corporations, similar to Nokian and Goodyear, feature aramid fibers of their tire sidewalls for extra support if there is a puncture. And that material — sometimes known by the trade name Kevlar — is usually utilized in bulletproof armor.
Well, we have got excellent news. Though for some odd reason Consumer Reports doesn’t include bullet resistance when analyzing, as an example, CR’s top truck and SUV tire picks for 2026, Parker Smith of the Yee Yee Life YouTube channel recently took up the challenge. He brought five latest, unmounted 37-inch Nitto Mud Grappler tires and diverse firearms out to the shooting range, stood the tires up in a single row, tread-to-tread, and started working.
Smith’s test was to shoot on the front treadface of the primary tire and see how far the bullet would get into the treadfaces of the tires behind the No. 1 position. So the perfect path could be into the surface tread facing the gun, through your entire first wall of the tire, then into the within a part of the rear wall, through the treads facing directly opposite the gun, and into the subsequent tire — an unlikely real-world scenario, but still interesting to observe.
Where the rubber meets the rifles (and handguns)
The outcomes may surprise you, as they actually didn’t appear to be what Smith expected, especially the entry holes. Even with the most important caliber guns — meaning those with the widest-diameter bullets — the entry points were quite small. Smith put this all the way down to the flexibility of the thick rubber to shut over the holes after the bullets get through. In truth, the rubber was so thick that, combined with the steel belts beneath, it stopped a bullet from a .22-caliber pistol from breaking through to the within the primary tire.
Moving as much as his Glock pistol, Smith was in a position to put a 9mm round with a full-metal jacket completely through the primary tire and past the primary treadface of the second. Yet size didn’t at all times appear to matter here, as a .45-caliber Browning handgun, with a good wider bore than the Glock, got its bullet stuck within the second tire’s first treadface without penetrating it. The story was much the identical with a .44 Magnum. That said, the last and largest handgun tested, a gas-operated semi-automatic Desert Eagle loaded with .50-caliber bullets, made it past the primary two tires before lodging within the front treadface of the third.
To beat that mark, Smith needed to resort to an assault rifle firing 5.56mm green-tip rounds engineered with special “penetrator” steel cores — one among which embedded itself in the within back wall of the third tire, meaning it essentially pierced the treads of 2¾ tires. Now, you are definitely welcome to (safely) do that yourself, but please do not be just like the Des Moines cop who drove off with a rifle on his roof.
This Article First Appeared At www.jalopnik.com
