Dirt Hawgs on narrowed Outback 40's

[BENDER]

I posted sneak peak of these in WannaBe's thread for Moab's and I want to go into more detail w/out hi-jacking his thread. After reading his Ultimate Tire Foams thread I found some egg crate foam (I think that's what it's called). It already has similar contour to what he was describing. I'm going to try custom cut foams using this and see if it works. I also bought a hand full of o-rings w/ about 3 5/8" I.D. and about 1/4" thick. I'm using these as temp beadlocks, sort of, you can use these on rim to play w/ different tire widths. I'll get better pics of tires, foams and o-rings up later today hopefully. I wanted to throw these ideas out there. OK on to pics.

I narrowed rims on axle side only, took out roughly 3/4". I cut axle side bead seat off , cut rim down to webbing on backside. Then sanded the two on flat surface before glueing back together. So far it is plenty strong.

Rim width 2 5/8"
Tire diameter 6 5/8"

[mrwonderful]

Looks Great! How well do they work?

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Originally Posted by mrwonderful

Looks Great! How well do they work?

So far I'm really happy, they seem to be as good as my Giant Tracs. I just narrowed foams an inch, I'm going to try it out now. In the pics above I was running full width foams, but I drilled six 3mm holes in rim, 1 behind every web. Tires are too soft to work good w/ out foams, in my opinion.

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Here are a few more pics. This is the profile I'm going to run.


You can see seam from narrowing, holes I drilled behind webs, and how much more I need to narrow rims to stay w/ that profile. Basically I'm going to cut inner part of rim off up to backside of webbing. But I'm still not sure need more test runs to tell.


Pics of foam I'm going to try out in comparison w/ piece of stock foam I cut off. O-ring works ok for checking tire widths, I had them tucked between tire bead and bead seat on rim. They worked good for testing I never tack glued tires or o-rings and I was able to test drive in rocks w/out rim spinning inside tires


Here's my rig next to my buddies brand new Super Clod. He's thinking about buying Gecko 2 LWB chassis, I'm pushing him in that direction anyway. It's his first real r/c. Gives a rough comparison in tire size.

[BENDER]

Originally Posted by slbks5

Looking good BENDER. I had my Mambo wheels narrowed by about an inch by Rich (WRMORRISON) and I glued them back together today and mounted the tires... They look much better now!!

Nice, I was skeptical about 40's but, after narrowing rims I'm really happy w/ them.

[BENDER]

Couple more crawling pics w/ new tires, after narrowing foams an inch, they work even better. I think egg crate foam is going to be too soft, but I'll try it.


Width is now 15 1/2" outside to outside of tires, w/ my Giant Tracs I'm at 14 1/2".

[WRMorrison]

Looks good! If my current wheel/tire combo doesn't work out, I may have to jump on the "40's" bandwagon and try 'em out.

[BENDER]

Well, they're all glued up and working awesome. The egg crate foam was too soft for my rig, it weighs almost 10lbs, but it might work in a clod or small scaler w/ thin skinned tire. I did let profile out a little from earlier pics. I ended up w/ narrowed stock foams, cut down about an inch. I'll get a couple more pics of finish set-up soon.

[Grizzly4x4]

I caint believe how nicely the lugs pulled over to the sidewall. They look like they should be awesome Bender.

I was at the westminster HTown and almost bought a set of them, I think I'll try my other tire idea first though.

Great job, caint wait to see them in action.

[BENDER]

Thanks Grizz, that's where I bought these. Suppose to hook up w/ Dirk and them for "lunch" crawls, I'm anxious to see how they compare to his Moabs.

[Grizzly4x4]

Lemme know when you guys go. I werk off of 120th and Grant so I dont think I'm too far away. Sometimes I have extra time for lunch.

[BENDER]

Sweet, Dirk mentioned he might have time this week. But, no set plans yet.

[BENDER]

Now that I've had a chance to test these a few times at my usual spots, I figured I'd give an update. They work awesome as I stated earlier, I was able to make lines today that I was never able to make before. On steeper inclines the tires get just the right amount of "sidewall wrinkle". There is noticable wear on them but nothing I'm concerned about, and the rocks I run on are like sandpaper.

A couple pics of my buddies freshly modded clod and roctapus crawling today.