paddle tires

[mlrailguy]

I picked up a pair of STU 1300+ recently, cause my old ones are getting old . Any way they are a different cut than what I have. I was wondering how much difference I would notice with these? Also thought about stagger cutting them. Any thoughts, comments?

[Ol'fogasaurus]

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I think what you had before was called a "play cut; I have a pair of the same style. Basically they remove every other blade and on mine you could see what was left of the removed blade. I have also seen them trimmed like you were talking about with a "stagger cut"; e.g., one side cut off on one blade then the next blade is cut the same way but from the opposite side, but I don't remember ever hearing any talk on how they work but I think they may have been called "comp cut" and were to remove weight for drag racing on the sand. I haven't seen any of them for quite a few years now.

Also remember that rim size a weight makes a very big difference in how the paddles work. For instance, when I bought my paddles from Sandtires unlimited back in the early 90s (shown in the picture) I was advised that since I was running them on a glass buggy that was heavier than a rail and since I was running on the Oregon dunes where the sand is different that I would want more flotation so a 1300+ on wide (15 X 15) rim would be what I wanted. Go forward a few years and after I bent a rim clipping a tree, this time I went to a 12 X 15 AL rim. The difference was night and day: I could get to the top of this one dune (80' to 100' tall w/o having to double clutch into first (I am running a light flywheel so there isn't as much energy storage which does make a difference).

http://www.sandtiresunlimited.com/sandtire1.html Read some of the work descriptions on the tires as you might get some ideas on how your new tires might work.

I am now running the Desert Traks (STU talks about this in their write up above). They work a bit different than play cut paddles and run best at 5#s of air pressure rather than the 7 1/2#s I ran on the play cut paddles. Since I have to run a short trip on asphalt these work better without getting damaged like the play cuts were. The play cuts do bounce around more (the spacing of the blades) on hard surfaces than the many blade style of paddles like you have but who cares right .

Also notice, STU shows there is now one tire they have with a thick blade then a thin blade. Very interesting!

In looking around I found this, it is a cut for smaller rigs but the blade design is what I thought was interesting: https://simpletire.com/greenball-25-8.0 ... pe=atv-utv

I hope this helps some.