Low Pressure tires Vehicles
En español
All-terrain vehicles on low-pressure tires are a fairly popular means of transportation in the conditions of our severe off-road conditions. Such an idea was born back in Soviet times. A lot of enthusiastic craftsmen assembled machines for personal use, even exhibitions of such vehicles were held. Alterations were made to factory models of motorcycles and cars. In the end, a unique product came out that opened up unlimited possibilities in cross-country ability.
The history of all-terrain vehicles on low pressure tires
For a relatively short historical period, technological progress in the field of vehicles conquered all the elements - earth, water, air, as well as the outer space. But here's the paradox: when ocean liners at full speed stuck in icebergs, when airplanes ceased to be exotic, and cars strengthened both as luxury and as a means of transportation, only snowy plains remained unconquered. The task of minimizing the specific load of the wheels (skis) of the motor unit per square centimeter of snow seemed impossible.
Ernest Shackleton was chosen to be the leader of the British Imperial Antarctic Expedition that left for Antarctica in 1907 aboard the ship Nimrod.
The car was a modified Arrol-Johnston with 15 horsepower air cooled engine. It was donated for free and used as an advertisement. Unfortunately however the petrol engine had not been tested in extreme cold and a suitable system for providing traction in snow had not been devised and the car couldn't moved an inch Eventually the car was used in few occasion because it could only run on hard smooth surfaces which are not so common in Antarctica. Usually it was used as far as possible until the wheels became stuck in snow, finally this car only came within 150 kilometers of the pole, somestimes manhauling the sledge. Ironically suffering from overheating of the engine, so the men had to wait in the cold for it to cool down again before it could run.
The second attempt to conquer the snow plains was made thanks to the advent of the aircraft attaching to the sleigh an its engine, by the Russian engineer Kuzin in 1912. The idea for those times turned out to be so revolutionary that already during the Civil War, an entire commission was created to organize the construction of snowmobiles. Snowmobiles actively worked "in the north" as postman and, of course, for the war. However, the obvious drawbacks of this snowmobile: the ability to move only in open and level terrain and the inability to overcome a climb , stopped the development of this kind of vehicles.
In the post-war years, a wide variety of techniques were used: tracked, ski-tracked, etc. However, the most promising were the development of models of wheeled all-terrain vehicles on pneumatics.
Pneumatics are wheels of large radius and ultra-low pressure (from 0.15 to 0.5 atmospheres), allowing the machine not to fall through on loose snow, confidently move on the mud and even swim.
The idea was growing up by the popular thought. Back in the early 70s, the habitants of the north the country, who spent all their free time ice-fishing on the seaside for long winters, trimmed the cameras from the truck to the motorcycle, and they got the so-called karakat - a machine that can easily move through the fluffy snow, not drowning in it and quite nimble (speed reached 25 km / h). And so that the camera after inflation did not inflate to the size of a giant donut, it was tied by belts around the entire circumference. These belts, by the way, did an excellent job because the wheels did not slip in the snow. 
Without reinventing the wheel, Arktiktrans replaced the motorcycle with an useless motorbike and the snow-and-swamp vehicle “Nara” turned out, a floating all-terrain vehicle on low-pressure tires. The base for it was the rather light motorized stroller SMZ S-3D.
The word "snow and swamp truck" was born during the certification of the product: there were snowmobiles, swamps too, but the world had never seen such a thing. Small all-terrain vehicles "Nara", made on the basis of a motorbike were bought by geologists and residents of the northern regions. 
The "Artic" model was an already quite industrial development made by ecommissioned combat aircrafts. So “karakat” found a cabin-body made of a MiG-23 fuel tank, sawn in half.
The most important thing with this kind of vehicles was their fantastic cross-country ability. Due to the low pressure, the pneumatics seem to flatten out on the surface, forming a large contact spot. And without that, the mass of the all-terrain vehicle, distributed over several of these same spots, creates a specific pressure on the soil several times lower than it will put pressure on the same soil of the wheelprint. Moreover, a large contact surface allows you to implement significant traction to drag a trailer with a considerable load.
But that is not all. Pneumatics allow the these cars to easily swim without even touching the bottom of the water surface. In this case, they act both as a mover and as a displacement volume. Float pneumatics plunge into the water somewhere up to half their diameter and work like the wheels of a steamer
Other Russian manufacturers of all-terrain vehicles have taken the path of creating prototype cars, that is, automobiles that are recognized as Niv and UAZ bodies. Either the native body or the Niva’s cab is placed on the frame from the UAZ, and the bridges are raised so that the wheels are nicely sized - just gigantic - 1300 mm in diameter, 600 mm wide.
These monsters are super-effective on the snow. These cars weigh almost 2.5 tons and there are not very comfortable in the cabin. A huge spare wheel takes up the entire rear compartment of the cab.
Below, we show you a series of vehicles of this kind. Regardless of the year of construction or if they are homemade cars or not
Here you can see the biggest compilation of this unusual kind of vehicles, with more than 20 modern Tire Low Pressure SUV manufacturers mostly in Russia.
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