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Maxi traction Harvest: Harvester tyres with good road handling capacity

Which harvester tyre can improve comfort and preserve your health

Authored by: Tractor tyre expert | 21 June 2022

Agricultural tyres are designed to be able to adapt to very different types of ground, of varying extremes if you compare very wet earth to a tarmacked road surface.
The tyres are logically optimised to work in the fields, which is generally the main objective for agricultural machinery. This is where the difficulty lies for manufacturers who must achieve compatibility between a tyre that is highly efficient on soft soil as well as having excellent road handling capacity during transport on extremely hard road surfaces.
For harvester tyres; the compromise is difficult because the machines are very heavy. However, there are tyres that are the result of highly advanced research and development. They provide very good road handling while avoiding excess vibrations and therefore preserve the health of the farmer who will be exposed to these vibrations over many hours during the harvesting period.

When you drive on the road, the lugs come into contact with the very hard ground one after the other, which provokes a repeated high-frequency impact.

This repetitive percussion generates vibrations which can be so strong that they affect the driver. When the body vibrates for several hours in a row, this has consequences on your spinal column and can cause serious back pain.

A badly designed tyre or a tyre that has not undergone research and development studies will generate excessive vibrations and generally will not perform well on the road.

 

1. Efficient tyres for road related shock absorption

The tyre must be able to absorb the shocks linked to contact with the road which may have bumps, potholes, poor quality repairs, surface water drains below the level of the road, etc.

For a combine harvester which is a heavy machine, the tendency is to overinflate the tyres in order to bear the weight. A tyre with a high inflation pressure will be very rigid and will be much less efficient as a shock absorber.
All the more so in that the tyre will have been inflated taking into account the weight of the mounted cutter bar which is generally removed when there is a long trip by road between two fields or when the roads are too narrow.

Efficient tyres for road related shock absorption

The use of harvester tyres such as the 800/60 R32 Maxi Traction Harvest allows you to drive with an inflation pressure of around 1.8 bar, which is much lower than the 3.2 to 4 bar you would need with standard harvest tyres.

The suppleness obtained with this lower pressure allows the tyre to mould into the ground better and change shape to accommodate the obstacles it encounters. The tyre absorbs the irregularities in the road, thus improving driving comfort.

 

2. Avoiding vibrations to preserve one’s health

A day of harvesting involves many hours which accumulate over several intensive weeks.
The quality of your tyres is one of the direct causes of the level of vibrations felt in the cab. If these vibrations are not absorbed by the tyres, they reverberate throughout the machine and have an effect on the farmer’s body.

Without us being really aware of it, they act in three different directions simultaneously:

  1. front/back (from back to chest),
  2. right/left,
  3. down/up (buttocks to head).

These vibrations are responsible for many herniated discs, sciatic or femoral pain and other musculoskeletal disorders, mainly in the back.

Avoiding vibrations to preserve one’s health

To resolve this problem or try to minimise it, the quality of your equipment is essential; a suspended cab is a real advantage but you cannot add it if your harvester is not equipped with one.

On the other hand, the quality of your tyres is easy to adapt when it comes to replacing them, by opting for more high-tech tyres which have been designed to curb vibrations.
It’s a simple way of protecting your body during harvesting and easily managing a few more hours without any negative health consequences.

 

3. The new Maxi Traction Harvest tyre, optimised for harvesting with optimal driving comfort

It has an extremely solid casing construction which provides extensive flexion in the sidewalls, is capable of working at low pressure which preserves you soil while playing its essential shock absorption role to reduce vibrations.

The greater number of layers in its tread and sidewalls make it highly resistant to variations in cyclic loads during harvesting as well as giving it the capacity to work at a pressure of up to 4 bar if necessary to obtain a maximum load bonus.

The new Maxi Traction Harvest tyre

Despite this optimal potential in the management of loads linked to harvests, the Maxi Traction Harvest uses the latest technological developments to obtain perfect road handling characteristics and optimal driving comfort.

The overall design has been developed to reduce the force of the lugs’ impact on the ground. With more lugs than standard tyres, they are closer together and have a much more regular impact frequency which cushions the level of vibrations.


New design Firestone Maxi Traction Harvest



More overlapping of the lugs at the centre of the tread provides a continuous grip on the ground which offers a driving comfort and precision that is rare with the harvest tyres currently available on the market.

Before being placed on the market, Firestone’s tyres undergo extensive technical testing in real conditions in terms of driveability, resistance, traction, comfort…. allowing the brand to offer a 10-year warranty on tyres such as the Maxi Traction Harvest.

 


For more information on tractor tyres

With Firestone, you have the guarantee of tractor tyres that deliver a real advantage, and that in choosing our brand, you can work worry-free.

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