Cutting Edge

Image Gallery An aerial view of the Firestone Test Center taken in the 1960s. The test circle on the lower right is the only one still in use today. The old “century” house is at the lower left and the barn at lower right.

Today, the Firestone Test Center is located on a 350-acre farm just north of the original Firestone Homestead Farm. There's a beautiful old "century" farmhouse, a large bank barn and several outbuildings on the property, as well as a circular test track.

The barn houses a number of tire testing machines that run 24 hours every day of the year. Under the supervision of Test Center Manager Ben Strawinski, these machines test Firestone's complete line of agricultural, construction, forestry and ATV tires, as well as conduct evaluation testing of tires from competing manufacturers. Electrically powered drum-type machines subject the tires to abuse and misuse, including severe loading pressures and lateral forces.

Other machines expose tires to high concentrations of ozone in order to test their resistance to the effects of heat and sunlight. There's a large band saw where some of the tires are dissected after testing, and resulting damage to the tire structure is evaluated. A safety rack outside one building allows tires to be inflated until they burst, in order to test the strength of sidewalls and beads.

A late model John Deere tractor, equipped with remote starting and stopping controls, runs continuously around the test track, where it is tethered by a cable to a post in the center of the circle. Instead of the old Fordson tractors once used as loads, a computer-controlled and -programmable trailer varies the load on the tractor. A couple other John Deere tractors are available for testing tires under actual field conditions.

In place of the Metro test truck from the 1940s and '50s, the "Mean Machine" is used to provide loading in the field. This huge machine weighs more than 25 tons and can offer as much as 60,000 pounds of resistance to the pulling tractor. The Mean Machine is full of fancy computer gear that monitors the performance of each tire being tested.

Firestone's high-tech test facility is a far cry from the days when Harvey Firestone cranked up his Farmall tractor, climbed aboard and tested his own tires.