What new foams for the Gen8?

[Browneye]

All foam breaks down over time. And why it's so crappy in a mattress. LOL
The Lil'Novas outers will compress, and stay wet, but the inners don't. Easy to replace the outers. And why I prefer the medium or firm outer since they compress easily anyway. And if you choose a not-to-big inner there's plenty of room for that compression, and the squatting and good traction for your tires. "thumbsup"

I like the '8lb-look' to my tires. Reminiscent of the 1:1's. The Nova inners support the tire when it really gets squashed, like for hard edges, sharp rocks, and side-hilling - unlike single stage 'stock' foams.

 

[coffeeaddict17]

What are the temperatures where you're at? They're below freeezing here, and in my 40 degree garage, I can crack sheetrock with the foams. :lmao:

:lmao: The last trail run was in the 30s when we started. They were bricks! They softened up quickly, and never got hard again.

 

[Jim85IROC]

:lmao: The last trail run was in the 30s when we started. They were bricks! They softened up quickly, and never got hard again.

They have medication that can help you out with that. ;-)

 

[turbofan]

Gents, need a little help on these CI foams.

The stock Gen8 Tires measure 4.5" OD. I got some Duratrax Deep Woods tires which measure 4.75" OD, so I ordered the 4.75" foams. They arrived - the foams measure 5.5" OD with the tuning ring, 5" OD without! I called them and the guy on the phone had no idea what I was talking about. He suggested I order 4.25" foams for my Duratrax tires, but I have a hard time trusting his advice since he didn't know this was a thing.

Which size foams should I get? Has anyone else experienced this with the CI foams measuring much larger than claimed?

 

[Jim85IROC]

I don't have experience with the duratrax tires, but here's what I do have experience with:

I bought some of the 4.5" foams for the stock Gen8 tires and they were too big for the tires. There was virtually no squish in the tire. I replaced them with 4.25" foams. Soft in front, medium in the rear. Those still don't have a lot of squish, but they are definitely more compliant over obstacles.

In my 4.75" Hyrax tires, I went with the 4.5" CI foams, again with soft up front & medium in the rear. In the super soft Hyrax tires, there's a lot of squish in the front tires... maybe too much. Next time I pull them apart I may add the tuning ring that came with the foams to try and fill the tire a bit more.

Since the Duratrax tires are 4.75 and probably have a very soft sidewall just like the Hyrax, I think the 4.5" foams would be best, but you may want to keep the tuning ring that comes on the foams for the front.

 

[turbofan]

Killer info Jim, thank you.

Are you happy with the soft front/medium rear combo? I originally ordered the same for both but could be convinced to go soft on front. These rigs are so heavy, I hesitate to use the soft foam on them. But I guess that's why you recommended the tuning rings

 

[Jim85IROC]

With the Gen8, I'm still using the stock tires, and I feel that the "soft" is still a bit too firm up front, but I think it's just because the Gen8 tire carcass is stiff. On my Enduro, which uses Hyrax tires, I find the soft to be a tad too soft up front, which is why I want to try adding that outer ring back on. With the addition of that outer ring I think it will be better. My Enduro is around the same weight or a tad heavier than my Gen8 on the front wheels, so assuming your Duratrax tires are as soft as the Hyrax tires, I suspect that the soft tires will be good with the outer ring still in place.

 

[turbofan]

Great, thanks again Jim, much appreciated.

Unfortunately their stock level on Amazon is pretty low and they don't have the right stuff in stock right now. Ended up going with the proline foams since they're available and the CI ones aren't. Hopefully they perform well.

 

[AK KRAWLER]

I ordered CI 4.25" Dual Stage Soft for the front and Mediums for the rear, still using stock tires and wheels.

For now, I left the small tuning ring on them, but may pull it off once I run it a bit more. No real chance to test it out much yet.

Front

Rear

 

[turbofan]

Thanks for the links. Out of stock right now, so I'll give the prolines a go and hope to get CI next time I need foams.

 

[Jim85IROC]

Thanks for the links. Out of stock right now, so I'll give the prolines a go and hope to get CI next time I need foams.

I always order my CI foams directly from CI or from RPP. I've never encountered an out-of-stock situation at CI directly.

http://crawlerinnovations.com/lil-nova/1-9-4-25-1/

 

[Bob_in az]

I've got the 4.5" novas in my stock gen8 tires. At first, I thought they were too big & didn't like the feel of them after I mounted them. I took a test run & was unimpressed. At first, they were worse than the memory foams. Then I took the truck out for a full run in the rocks. They just kept getting better & better. By the end of that run, I couldn't believe how well the tires/foams were working. They've been great ever since.

 

[Hkguy00]

Nova 4.5s? I thought the stock Swampers were a 4.75 tire?

This is obviously an old thread, but to correct everyone in here the Gen 8 stock swampers are not 4.75 tires, there 4.5 from the factory.. if you want 120mm 4.75's get some Proline Hyrax.. Good day

 

[Flamnpede1]

I agree this is an old thread....However, Deep Woods with Proline dual stage foams seems to work pretty well. :mrgreen:

 

[Reckboy]

I ended up trying the boiling method as demonstrated in the redcat video to soften the stock foams and remove most of the memory effect. I put the foams in boiling water for about 1 minute on each side. Once all done, dried out and reassembled, they are much, much softer and are plenty usable IMO. My son is running the redcat stock beadlock wheels, tires and boiled foams now on his Ascender k10 and they are working well in our back yard trail crawler course. Word of caution if you are going to try the boil method, you have to be super gentle with the foams while boiling, moving and cooling because they become quite fragile while that hot and heavy with all the hot water and steam inside. I ripped one pretty good just taking it out of the pot with tongs. Fortunately redcat gives you 5.

 

[ruralcrawler]

Old thread or not being new to this forum it was great to stumble across it. I have been looking at CI 4.5" foams for my tires. Just curious how much of the advice above is based on actually crawling on rocks, verses in the woods on trails, logs, twigs, homemade trail courses etc.

As I am embarking on my first scale crawler course build, I'm struggling to find a lot of tire/foam recommendations that aren't tailored towards rock crawling of which I won't have a lot of. Dirt, wood, grass, twigs, and a little rock will be the majority of the construction materials in use. Minimal manmade materials hopefully as I have a ton of trees fallen or cut up already in the woods to build with.

Anyone have recommendation on foams for a Gen8 or similar for trail crawling like this? My mind says that a little softer might be best. Short of just buying a few and trying them out, I would love recommendations so I can get to a good starting point right off the bat

Thanks in advance for everyones time.

 

[Dooleyzone]

I'm new to this forum and to crawling. I got my Gen8 about a week ago and was unimpressed with the performance of the tires on my first outing. It was a cool day only about 70°. I was out the other day and again today where the temp was approaching 100 and the climbing capability was completely different. Of course I didn't know about the foams were an issue before reading it here but now I'm thinking at least for the hot summer I may keep the stock tires/foams but ultimately I'll be changing out the wheels for some steel wheels and swampers with dual rate foams.

Now based on reading I need to start chasing down screws and lubrication pre-maintenance.

 

[Flamnpede1]

Old thread or not being new to this forum it was great to stumble across it. I have been looking at CI 4.5" foams for my tires. Just curious how much of the advice above is based on actually crawling on rocks, verses in the woods on trails, logs, twigs, homemade trail courses etc.

As I am embarking on my first scale crawler course build, I'm struggling to find a lot of tire/foam recommendations that aren't tailored towards rock crawling of which I won't have a lot of. Dirt, wood, grass, twigs, and a little rock will be the majority of the construction materials in use. Minimal manmade materials hopefully as I have a ton of trees fallen or cut up already in the woods to build with.

Anyone have recommendation on foams for a Gen8 or similar for trail crawling like this? My mind says that a little softer might be best. Short of just buying a few and trying them out, I would love recommendations so I can get to a good starting point right off the bat

Thanks in advance for everyones time.

I run mine everywhere and currently run proline dual stage foams as mentioned in my previous post. We hike in the PNW so there is a lot of various terrain we come across and they seemed to have worked pretty well on everything for the 55+ miles I have had them in there. I also have a set of stock TRX4 wheels and tires that seem to do pretty well right out of the box. However, they needed a little bit of a break-in period.