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Tire Magnoguard

 Protect from punctures.
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Most car tire punctures are from wayward screws and nails in the road. Almost all are ferrous. I propose a magnetic plate which would ride very near the road immediately in front of each tire. These plates would be hinged to swing out from under the car for easy cleaning. If a nail were in the road immediately in front of the tire, it would be grabbed by the Magnoguard before it could do harm. This would not only protect tires cheaply , but help clean up the road for other drivers who may not be similarly equipped.
—bungston, Jul 27 2003

A similar product http://magnets.pref...gn.com/sweepers.asp
[tekym, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

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       Or in the case of a hand grenade it would most certainly seal your fate...
—DeathNinja, Jul 27 2003
   

       Do you have any documentation to back up those two opening statements? Seems pretty damn unlikely to me.
—waugsqueke, Jul 27 2003
   

       What, never heard of Random hand-grenades being tossed out on the freeway?
—jong-scx, Jul 27 2003
   

       [Waugs], I admit I had no proof except for rummaging thru the trophy jars at tire repair places. I am curious what sort of things you find in your tires. Bones?
—bungston, Jul 28 2003
   

       I think [waugs] is missing <poorly thought out sarcasm> tags.
—Worldgineer, Jul 28 2003
   

       "bones." heh.
—bristolz, Jul 28 2003
   

       Tire Mangoguards, huh? Well, look, if you have to guard your tires from tropical fruits, then why not just walk everywhere when you are in the tropics?   

       Some issues are just so simple to resolve. You don't have to go noline to solve them. All you gotta do is apply the brian Dog gave you!
—ertdfgcvb, Aug 19 2003
   

       There used to be cool product for bicycle tires... a little wire bail that would *almost* touch the tire. The theory is that as the object came up off the ground (stuck in the tire), the bail would flick the darn thing off before subsequent revolutions would force the object deeper into the tire (and tube). It seemed to work, and worked just as well on glass, rocks, road-kill bones, auto fiberglass, and all the other crud that accumulates road-side.   

       With regard to an auto... any ferrous object that is not flung off from the tremendous centrifugal force of a spinning *car* tire, is probably going to require an ENORMOUS magnet.
—musicator, Aug 19 2003
   

       [MuMu] - the mango magic seizes the object _before_ contact is made with the tire - it is not like the admittedly cool sounding wire bale device you describe with allows a puncture but then minimizes damage.
—bungston, Aug 19 2003
   

       In case it makes you feel any better, yesterday I got a big screw in my brand-new Bridgestone tire. I immediately thought, "Damn, if I only had the magnoguard!"
—DeathNinja, Aug 24 2003
   

       //a little wire bail that would *almost* touch the tire. // The trouble with this is that car tyres are subjected to a lot more force than on a bicycle and may distort enough for the idea to fail.   

       I initially liked the magnet idea, because the device actually clears debris from the roads.   

       But, does anyone know how powerful a magnet should be to pick up metal off the road before it reaches the tyre of a car travelling, say 90mph? If the bumper magnet is 12 inches off the ground and 6 inches wide, it would have to accelerate the object pretty aggressively in the 1.6 milliseconds (call it 4, because the field radiates) that it takes to pass over the nail.   

       My experience dealing with permanent Neodymium-Iron-Boron and electromagnets suggests that acceleration starts slowly at first and the rate of acceleration increases the closer the object gets to the magnet (follows the power law, rather than constant acceleration in a uniform field). So, my point is, either you'll have to reduce the ground clearance to a very narrow gap, or the system won't be effective at high speed:   

       My calculation must be flawed, but it illustrates the idea. I plugged in a model where acceleration was proportional to the square of the distance and goal-seeked the required acceleration constant so that the nail reached the magnet 12 inches away in 4ms from a standing start. The spreadsheet calculated the final velocity of the nail was approximately 450 million mph.   

       A magnet strong enough to do that ... well let's just say it'd rip your car to shreds.
—FloridaManatee, Aug 24 2003
   

       [Florida] - maybe the solution is to have flexible magnetic cords which actually brush the ground ahead of the car. This would save on ferocious acceleration but they would wear out. Otherwise it looks like the Magnogard would be suitable mostly for those super lowriders that can push a pop can along in front of them.
—bungston, Aug 25 2003
   

       // flexible magnetic cords //
If you can do that, why not just have two semi-flexible (some type of large, minimally bendable wire, I suspect) wires on either underside of the bumper which would come to about a centimeter above the ground. They'd be on hinges, so if you happened to run over anything that would normally take them off, they'd simply be pushed up closer to the vehicle's undercarriage.
—Pseudonym #3, Aug 25 2003
   

       Oh, MaGNoguards? Well, that's different!   

       Ok, how about a government system of cheaper fuel taxes for those using magnoguards? When you pull into a gas station, on driving across a special pad, your magnoguard will be deactivated for several seconds, automatically dump its assortment of screws, nails, keys, etc. The collection will be weighed and, based on poundage, a discount will be applied at the pump.
—ertdfgcvb, Aug 25 2003
   

       //The collection will be weighed and, based on poundage, a discount will be applied at the pump.//

"That's it, kids, now just try and fit a /few/ more pounds of scrap on there and we'll get a free tank.."
—Pseudonym #3, Aug 25 2003
   

       hey, I'm in the Air Force and in my job I have to drive on the flight line (where the planes ride around). Alot of our vehicles that drive out there have a magnet that spans the entire width of the car/van/truck and picks up random metallic items to prevent the airplane engines sucking up foreign debris and getting damaged.
—quickwit, Nov 18 2003
   


 

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