English abstract
The Saudi Arabian Standards Organization, SASO, has established a set of tests that all passenger car tires have to pass in order to be allowed into the Country. These tests are: visual inspection, dimension measurement, bead unseating, tensile strength and elongation, aging, endurance, and high speed performance tests. This paper describes the application of the first five tests on eight different brands of tires that are taken to represent the categories of "frequently failed" and "infrequently failed" tires in the country. The results showed that the dimensions of almost all the tested tires were somewhat different from those documented in the SASO standards. On the other hand, all the tested tires passed the bead unseating and strength tests. All tires in the "frequently failed" category failed the tensile strength test. In contrast, all tires from the "infrequently failed" category passed this test. The average values of the test for these two tire categories were statistically different at a 95% confidence level.
