quote:

Originally posted by Fallow Buck:

I have often wondered why the people in Africa do not use tubeless tires! We have done a lot of cross country driving both racing and hunting in some of the roughest country on this planet, and over time have found that tubeless tires, with copious amounts sealant in the tire will take some pretty large thorns and sticks in them and stay inflated. The thorns and stobbs become plugs with the sealant sealing the hole in the tire. A tire with a tube that takes a thorn and slowly looses air lets the thorn destroy the tube even with sealant.

When the tubeless tire wears out and is removed from the wheel, look inside the tire and what you will see will look like a porcupine with all the thorns sticking through the tire to the inside, but a tire that has never lost air. The tire loosing air and getting low is what destroys the side wall like the one in the picture above!
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I think most of the new vehicles probably have tubless but most of the older Toyota Landcruisers I saw had two piece rims which don't lend thmselves to tubless tires. I have only spent time in Zimbabwe but if you have ever had to scrounge for tires there you would take whatever you could get and be thankful for it. I worked many years for a tire manufacturer and actually did not believe my own eyes at some of the repairs done there on damaged tires. They didn't throw ANYTHING away. Then made sandal soles of the treads remaining.