Tire ponderence

After studying the photos from several rock crawling championships, I cant help but think that perhaps a smooth tire with race car like compound (or softer) may do as good or better a job than all the agressively constructed tires. The reason I speculate this is that for the most part the rocks' surfaces are smooth, so more rubber on each tire will mean more traction on the round smooth rock surfaces. Sure the Super Swampers look awesome and really give that off road look, but perhaps a 44" slick with very thick side walls and contact area may do as well or better. Your thoughts?

XJguy

Wait just a minute there Sparky.... Before you go posting new threads like nothing ever happened, you better go back to that "other" forum and address the replies that the gentlemen on your "list" have posted.

you need lugs to dig and grab, lugs listen when you yell at them too. with the smooth philosophy AT's would work better. i can verify they dont.


Hunter

lets leave ***ALL*** mention of the "other thread" off of the open boards.

XJG, what hunter said.

If "slicks" would be a good idea, BFG would have dumped the krawler if favor of the "Smoothie" when you get out on the trail someday, you'll see.

If it were completely smooth slick rock like parts of moab, the more tire contact would be better, meaning a slick. But even slick rock isn't "smooth" it has jagged parts that need to be"biten". You won't get that bite with a slick. So in some parts it could be an advantage, but probabaly over 90% of the time, the huge lugs will kick it's ass. So, I'm just backing up the other two comments.

Seriously here, not bagging on you. You Have to Be There.

When you are spotting or just witnessing someone on a steep rock with a Super Swamper's side lugs fighting to get a bite on the wall, and all of the sudden that heated Swamper starts to climb. Its really sweet. The smell of tire smoke, the sound of the lugs fighting for traction is like sex (okay, not quite, but...)

Anyhow, a slick would only work on the very slick rocks (aka-dragstrip). They usually only work really well there when they have been properly heated. You don't have the convenience of a burnout box and DHT on the rocks.

Gotta go now,
Crunch

Rich,

Glad to see you posting!


The slick idea is WAY out there .

When you see it for yourself, you'll see how the RIGHT size and shape lugs WILL grab even the smallest cracks in the rock and provide traction.

Now IMO the SS has way too big of lugs. The MTR and Krawler lugs are a good size and with compounds make them both great tires for RCing.



mark

Mark Hinkley said:

Now IMO the SS has way too big of lugs. The MTR and Krawler lugs are a good size and with compounds make them both great tires for RCing.

Click to expand...

Um, the Kralwer lugs are the same size if not bigger then the SS lugs??

Weasel said:

Um, the Kralwer lugs are the same size if not bigger then the SS lugs??

Click to expand...

?????


My eyes might be old but not that old!


hinkley

Good points...I was thinking a compound so soft that is nearly melts over the rocks, really deforms over the terrain, without neccessitating heating up. But I could see a down side to that idea as well..you would pick up so much sand and gravel on the sticky tire surface that it may render it useless byt the time you actually get to the rocks. But perhaps for a competition only rig where you can just place the vehicle right at the start of the rock run, and even wipe down the tires before starting your run, it just might work.

XJguy

if a compound it VERY VERY soft, you'll literally rip the shit out of it.

here's another angle i think is true to say:

if soft slicks would work in the offroad world, you would have already seen it used out there.

a good way to see what really works good, and see what new ideas are being tested, study what the competitors are doing.

It may rip it apart by the end of the competiton, but it is a competition rig/buggy not a casual recreational vehicle like we all have. In motorsports they change the tires several times during the races, if you have to do 3 or 4 runs in a rock crawling challange and you are an all out world champion level competitor, with sponsors and such, then if you need 4 sets of tires that can practically stick you to a vertical wall, I think it would be a good trade off. IMHO

I hear what your saying, but that does not always hold true. Youre the first with a parabola-XJ and I am pretty sure it will work great...just thinking outside the box. Didnt want to say it, but I think the work youre doing on that thing looks great by the way, even if Mark disagrees

XJguy

Hmmmm........ soft & sticky....

Unlike on-road competitions (like F1, drag strip, NASCAR, etc.,) rock crawling competitions are held on very hostile surfaces. They aren't clean, they aren't flat, and you can plan on a lot of sharp edges.

Even if you could scrub the tires, you'd already be loading up the compound (kind of like sandpaper) as soon as you start to move.

I "lathed" off some rubber on my front MT/Rs up on Moab Rim's Z-Turn. Softer compound All it takes is a single mistake and I'm down to cords. Not good in the middle of competition.

The manufacturers have been making soft compound competition tires already. And with a good set of beadlocks, those tires will wrap around just about anything.

Most of the time, the tire speeds won't be high enough to keep any heat in the carcass anyway.

There is definitely something to the soft compound tires, but what I see are deeper lugs coming for the competition crawlers.

I think the Krawler lugs are bigger then the SS. I was checking Jaosn Paule's out and they are huge.

As for the theroy of if it works better it would already be done I'm calling B.S. Look how much stuff has changed in just this year in rock crawling. Lots of simple no brainer changes as well. Often I think that people are too afraid to lose and won't try anything new.

Anyways for the slickrock comps I see no reason a slick would not work. As for the tires not warmin up, almost every vid I see has people burning out up a rock wall. The slicks warm up just as fast.

One thing about the slicks that you're not thinking of. SIDE traction. In the good aggressive tires you can use the lugs that are on the sidewall to aid in traction, I've been in situations where I would've liked that (I just have road tires), every bit of lug helps!

As stated, slickrock is not slick, hell it's not hard to get traction on that, just go out there and walk on it, you can climb up stuff like spiderman!

The soft/sticky mass of tire (Silly Putty?) idea, while in theory would seem to be okay, I couldn't see holding. While it would conform to irregularities in the surface, I can't see how you'd keep inpurities from sticking to it, you can't really tell by the pictures, but there is a fair amount of sand around any rocks, and stopping every ten feet to clean the tire would be a little counter-productive...

Things will change, in ten or twenty years they will probably be running tire ideas that we'd laugh at now, however I don't think slicks will be the route they choose, there's just too much need for tires that can easily grab in an irregular surface..

Sequoia

A nice wide set of slicks would work good in sand but thats about it. I grew up driving in orange groves...any kind of agressive lugs will get you on the frame quick in Florida sugar sand. (It will not pack when it's dry).

We have trucks called "Grove goats" that move the harvested oranges out of the groves...they run big balloon tires that only have enough tread to keep John Law off the drivers.

Rich --

You've been cooped up in NYC too long. Don't you think if there was even a remote possibility that this would work we would have seen one or more competitors trying it at the rock crawling championships? Those guys do test their rigs between events.

Slick rock ain't slick.

Dunno Eagle, look at it this way, Rock Crawling has existed in organized competition form since 1998, only now is someone making a tire specifically for that purpose and only because there is enough of a following where they can make a significant buck. The companies wont go through the time and money to make a tire that will only sell to 30 people, but now the crawling has become so popular the tire companies are stepping in. We are only now seeing the first generation of purpose built tires for these events.

Look at snow tires for example, our dads, or maybe in some cases yourselves, all had those big lug ugly noisey snow tires, they had them for years. Then all of a sudden, someone decided, hey, lets make a relativley smooth tires with thousands of sipes...know what it sticks "pun intended". Snow tires now look nothing like those of yore. Same thing with these aquatread type tires. Water has always been on this earth, then all of a sudden the tire people decided lets try some deep grooves and channel the water out from under the tire...now all high performance all season tires have this design implementation.

How about a hybrid tire. Lugs with conventional softness on the outside ultra soft smooth sticky rubber on the main contact area.

XJguy

Rich,

This debate needs to be in NON-TECH now because it has gotten to that point. Unless you've got some personal experience to back up some of this speculation it's looking stupid to be argued by someone with as little rock experiences as you. Lugs are needed in Rock Crawling. Lets go on to something else.

mark

Dual compound tires are already on the market....softer tread compound and tougher sidewall compound.

The edges make a lot of difference in how a tire bites, whether it's snow, dirt, or rocks. The tires that bite the best have a combination of soft compound and a lot of edges. Swampers have a soft compound, but not enough edges, and so don't make the best rock tires. Grooving them improves their performance, because it creates more edges. More rock crawlers are getting their tires siped, and it's generally agreed that the increased number of edges improves performance on the rocks just like it does on wet surfaces.

The MT/R came out and very quickly became the tire of choice for competitions and for recreational rock crawlers. This tire has a reasonably soft compound and a lot of edges, plus big enough lugs to grab irregularities and ledges. The new Krawlers are the tire of choice now, mostly because the competion versions have such a soft compound.....too soft to run on the street. It's yet to be seen if the street version will perform better than the MT/R.

Another element involved in tires for rockcrawling is side grip, or side slip. A tire needs to be able to hold you on a line, and not let you slip off of a narrow edge or ridge. Certain tires on the market are bad in this area, like the Baja Claw, because it has a limited number of grooves longitudinally around the tire. A slick tire would be really lousy in this area.

The big lugs on a tire help to grab and push on steep surfaces, like on irregular waterfalls (most are) and on big ledges. On normal rock gardens you can't tell much of a difference between the MT's and the AT's, but when you get to the big ledges and climbs the MT's have a clear advantage. This isn't theory, mind you, it's observation and experience.

Additionally, we do encounter water and mud when rockcrawling. We cross creeks, go through water puddles, and sometimes it even rains on us. In the real world a slick tire just won't work, for MANY reasons. The only thing a slick would have going for it is the soft compound, but there are too many situations where that just wouldn't be enough.