Contrary to countless developed countries, Brazil insists on continuing to tighten laws for vehicle customization, making life increasingly difficult for customers and companies that operate a market worth billions of reais every year.
Many vehicle owners - including several of us at STRIKE BRASIL– resort to raising the suspension and increasing the diameter of their vehicles' tires to be able to deal with the potholed and poorly maintained roads in our country.
With this, they clash with our outdated and extremely rigid legislation, which practically bans such modifications, instead of regulating them in an efficient and, above all, intelligent way.
We want to start our article by calling on those who agree and identify with the text below, to sign the petition at the bottom of the page. We would also like to make it very clear that under no circumstances are we disagreeing with the attitude of the individuals who monitor current laws (police officers, traffic inspectors, etc.), nor that these laws should not exist; What we want is to make them more flexible, in order to reflect the true reality of the country and the Brazilian population.
Currently the CONTRAN Resolution 292/2008 One of its paragraphs states that changing the size of the vehicle's original tire/wheel assembly is not permitted. The idea behind this resolution is that with these prohibitions, it would be possible to improve safety on Brazilian roads. It will be?
Brazil has more than 1.700.000km of roads -yes, more than one million and seven hundred thousand kilometers of roads-, the majority of which are not even paved (by way of comparison, Argentina has a total of 231.000km) . The solution for many drivers for many of these roads ends up being to modify the vehicle's tires and suspension, so that the safety and reliability of driving on them increases.
The truth is that these laws we are talking about were probably created thinking about a utopian scenario where all highways are 100% paved, free of potholes, and with up-to-date maintenance - and we all know that this is not the reality in which we live. A LAW, however, must reflect the reality of all citizens of the country, and when they do not do so, the rules for exceptions must be defined! All of this adds up to the fact that if you have a loss on the road, resulting from a defect in the track, the loss ultimately ends up being yours. To illustrate the paragraph above, a photo of the BR-070, in a stretch between Goiás and Tocantins.
Still on the fact that the law was designed to maintain road safety, we take as an example the BFGoodrich All-Terrain tire, a tire widely used among “offenders”. These tires are approved with the “R” speed index, which indicates that the tire is capable of traveling at speeds of up to 170km/h without suffering any structural damage. The maximum speed limit in force in our country is 120km/h, that is, the tire is suitable for use on any national road, within the limit for which it was approved.
Many will claim that the vehicle's braking may be impaired with larger tires, and they are certainly not wrong. However, we recently carried out a test with an Amarok Highline V6, year 2018, and a Hilux 2.8L SRX, also 2018. The Amarok had 285/70R18 tires, 9.5% larger than the original factory measurements, and the Hilux was with original tires. The result? Even with the original measurement, the Hilux stopped several meters after the Amarok.
YES, we know that this test is biased, but it precisely proves the need to have an institution where it is possible to carry out measurements and approval of modifications! A practical example: a minimum braking index could be created, per vehicle category, and modified vehicles will have to perform better than this minimum. Simple, right?
The good news is that this institution already exists and even has a name: it is called INMETRO. INMETRO already has numerous accredited surveyors throughout Brazil, all capable of carrying out approvals. The only things missing are the creation of new rules to regularize these characteristics, and the common sense of our representatives to approve them and put them into force as quickly as possible.
Suggestions for making the law more flexible:
Allow changes to the vehicle's suspension and wheel/tire assembly, provided that:
- Pass Braking tests to confirm the efficiency of the new set (establish a minimum efficiency for each vehicle category)
- Confirm the speed index of the tire installed for use on all public highways in the country.
- Approval of the quality of the suspension lifting service, with structural tests of the parts used.
- Develop a test to prove the efficiency of the vehicle's suspension, not allowing “workarounds” to be made
- If the tire is sticking out of the vehicle's fender, allow the installation of parts such as “fender flares” to contain the tires back inside the vehicle.
- Establish a maximum limit for the difference between the wheel width and the tire width, to avoid possible tire “displacements”.
