BIG BIG paddle tire experment

June 30, 2009

Went to Coral Pink Sand Dunes in southern Utah over the weekend. Wanted to try out my big paddle tires. Let me give some background. The stock tires were useless in the sand as we all know. From there I went to paddle tires, wanting 27x14 but my dealer said Joyner said that would be too big for the gearing because of the sand drag. So I got 25x12's. They preformed fairly well but sunk in a lot the minute I started to spin. As long as I was on top they pulled fairly good but sunk in way too easy. After that I went to the 31x15 Mickey Thompson Baja tires which easily did as good as my smll paddles. They stayed on top better and for longer and thus climbed pretty good but they still didn't hookup like the paddle tires which didn't hookup enough. That left me with still not having enough flotation and still not getting a really good grip on the sand. Everyone I talked to and everything I read on the internet, said that the only way you can really go in the sand is to churn the tires hard and that takes horse power. I don't have that kind of HP. I figured that if I took a rubber track about 16" wide and made it like a bulldozer track and laid it on the sand hill from the bottom to the top, that I wouldn't be able to make it slip. So I figured the more paddle tire you get on the ground, the better the hookup when not spinning. So I got some really big paddle tires and to just see it I could actually get a hold of the sand. These tires are about 33" tall so gearing is high.

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It did hookup. I was suprised at how well. The lower 50% of the grades, I could pretty much zip up with just a little throttle, maybe 2000-3000 rpms. Not any noticable spinning. It was like I was on solid ground or close to it. On the steeper hills, in second with the motor reving at say 5500 rpms, it would just pull up like crazy. When I would pull the engine down and shift to first, it actually sort of took off again for a bit. At this point I would run out of power and always near the top of most big hills. I figure with 25% more low end torque and another 25-40 more HP, It would be a monster and go literally anywheres. It was that close to having enough already. Now, it isn't ever going to be a high powered sand rail and just scream up the biggest hills but unlike most others except for the sand rails, It will go up the same hills and pretty good at that. I'm not talking competive cliff climbing now. There is a limit but it will be absolutely impressive and without churning the tires. Look at the following pics. the first is a view of the hill I'm going to climb to give you an idea of it. I've went up much steeper then this but this was one of my goals. That goal being to go part way up this particular hill that my friends highly modified Rhino makes but without much room to spare. After about 3/4 of the way up, I wanted to turn around and head back down to just turn around again and go up and over. In other words do a 360 in the middle of the hill. Thats just what I did except the hill wasn't wide enough to let me get turned back up hill without stopping and backing up which I did. Look at the pics and you see my tracks. I started out with no head start at the right side of the base of the hill. Needless to say, I'm excited and starting to thing a little more power.

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Lenny