Foldable spare tire
AssigneeThe Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
InventorsMichael L. Gill, William M. Hopkins
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Tendency of a tire bead core to be rotated by the tire ply wrapped around the core, when the tire is expanded from a cylindrical or collapsed state to its normal toroidal operating state, particularly after the tire is cured, is inhibited, or eliminated by arrangement of the ply relative to the bead core which disposes the ply tension force direction at or nearly at the bead core center The foregoing abstract is not to be taken as limiting the invention of this application, and in order to understand the full nature and extent of the technical disclosure of this application, reference must be made to the accompanying drawing and the following detailed description.
Claims5
The method of building a foldable tire having a diameter at the tread centerline materially smaller when deflated for stowage than when inflated for use, the method comprising disposing at least one reinforcing cord ply in cylindrical form about a building drum, positioning a pair of tire bead cores coaxially of the drum and with their respective mid-planes normal to the axis of the building drum, displacing bead-receiving portions of the cord ply radially outwardly relative to the ply endings axially outward of the bead-receiving portions, moving the bead cores respectively axially to engage the associated bead-receiving portions such that each said bead-receiving portion is conformed about the associated bead core and such that said portion departs axially and radially outwardly of the bead core from its conformity therewith only at or beyond its mid-plane, and then turning the ply endings about the respectively associated bead cores and maintaining said conformity while molding and curing the tire.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.