Outer Limits 4x4 Board

o.k im asking the question for a number of reasons and l have pro's verses cons on both but would love everyone opinion BTW this is for comp use.

water is commonly used in tractors to give low down weight
lead would distroy the in side of the tyer i believe

but an other option you could look at is putting a heavy gas in ... so when you do build up speed it wont go nuts ... just a thought

Lead is Illegal to use in Werock. (for obvious reasons)

I use Steel shot.

A lot of myths about what it does inside the tyre, but basically it does nothing other than roll around.

I have run it in my tyres for over a year and the inside rubber is still perfect and the steel shot has never rusted and never clumped together.

I would never use water again as it really is a large mass for a small amount of weight.

Say 40 Kgs of water in each tyre, that would be somewhere near the centre line of the tyre (40kg's = roughly 40lts). Its a pretty good weight sloshing around and picture what happens on a cross slope with that water.

For the same in steel shot (40kgs) it would be lucky to take up 2 inches in the bottom of the tyre. Nice weight down really low.

Also the steel shot takes out alot of the "bounce" it nearly acts like a dead blow hammer. With water you still get some bounce.

I think i ended up paying something like $2.20 per Kg of steel shot.

Thats nearly cheaper than water up here!

havn't run either but fom what POS has said i agree with him steel shot would be good

id say water, but there a few good points regarding water capacity v's shot.

More weight = more grip, but i believe/was told that water does alot as far as suspension for tractors. most tractors i know of use 90% water, which is filled up with the vavle at upper most top while upright. then they are filled with air to about 3 psi and away we go. we used to get almost 3ft of air under a 400hp steiger pulling laser buckets without a drama. although the rims used to crack every now and then.


Water down here is still free and if you did manage to pop a bead or puncture a tube, it would be leasier to clean up than shot.

I have never used it in a 4wd, but then again creepies can run on 3-5 psi anyway.

Cheers

fool_injected wrote:http://www.outerlimits4x4.com/viewtopic.php?t=106937

This a different topic. The one here is about adding substance to help keep the buggies on their wheels while the hyperlink to the autobalance thread is about adding a substance to keep the wheels spinning true & balanced.

o.k thanks so far but i pose this that shot in mass has a fair amount of resistance were as water will move as easy as the tyre rolls there fore given a situation were the vehile is on a under cut the buggy has to work that much harder to even move the tyre let alone get up the obstical.
l noticed this when moving nams tyres aroung of the vehicle with water in them they would have rolled no worries but with shoot is a dead weight.Any more theories would be appreciated.Cheers

Webbie wrote:o.k thanks so far but i pose this that shot in mass has a fair amount of resistance were as water will move as easy as the tyre rolls there fore given a situation were the vehile is on a under cut the buggy has to work that much harder to even move the tyre let alone get up the obstical.
l noticed this when moving nams tyres aroung of the vehicle with water in them they would have rolled no worries but with shoot is a dead weight.Any more theories would be appreciated.Cheers

So you moved NAM's tyres with steel (or lead?) shot in them? Did you make an actual comparison with water or are you only guessing? Steel shot "flows" fairly easily. I would believe POS - who has tried both in comps.

Oh and POS - WEIGHT AND MASS are almost the same thing (weight = mass*gravity). You mean MASS and VOLUME.

ISUZUROVER wrote:
So you moved NAM's tyres with steel (or lead?) shot in them? Did you make an actual comparison with water or are you only guessing? Steel shot "flows" fairly easily. I would believe POS - who has tried both in comps.

Oh and POS - WEIGHT AND MASS are almost the same thing (weight = mass*gravity). You mean MASS and VOLUME.

Yeah, that too.

Webbie, so a tyre with 50kgs of water will climb a wall easier than a tyre with 50 kg's of steel shot?

If your concerned about the resistance of the steel shot making it a "lumpier" mass than you can also add Graphite powder to the steel shot to make it roll easier.

what about if you're in 3wd only and you have to move that dead tyre. is there any difference between water and shot?

N*A*M wrote:what about if you're in 3wd only and you have to move that dead tyre. is there any difference between water and shot?

Not that i have ever noticed. If there is it would be very marginal.

I only run it in the front tyres and the front is hardly if ever unlocked.

POS did you also find traction differences with the shot as it allows a greater volume of air in comparison to the water? Perhaps that may be another consideration.

Slunnie wrote:POS did you also find traction differences with the shot as it allows a greater volume of air in comparison to the water? Perhaps that may be another consideration.

Yes, with water you had to play with the pressure. (something to do with less air to compress).

Steel, takes up alot less space which pretty well keeps the pressures the same as if you had nothing at all in them.

Basically in every aspect steel shot is better than water. (its been tried and tested). The only thing water is better for is if you want to play with weights from event to event.

I saw Marty Hart at the Worlds dumping 50lts of water from each front tyre. He basically said thats the main reason he uses water compared to steel, he can look at the stages and see if theres a need for a heavier front or vice versa he can either dump or fill accordingly.

Mind you though, i couldn't work out why he just didn't have 3 sets of fronts each filled with different weight steel shot. (he could afford it)

I also found water to slosh slightly when you had to jump hard on the brakes.

OK I have a queston.
How does steel shot (or water for that matter) go in tyres that have internal staun type beadlocks?
Do you have any problems with it detroying the tubes?

steel .............for the same reason POS has stated !!
also , water has an inersia(sp?) effect !
when you stop , the water will keep "moving" inside the tyre !!
which in some situations , could cause problems !!!

also , if you hole a tyre , no fluid loss penalty !!!!!!

ausyota wrote:OK I have a queston.
How does steel shot (or water for that matter) go in tyres that have internal staun type beadlocks?
Do you have any problems with it detroying the tubes?

Cody Waggoneer, Jason Scherrer, Peter Antsinyasac, Ken Blume and so on and so on all run steel shot with Staun internal beadlocks.

Lee Davies (the boss of Staun) has also said that he has never seen an issue come from using steel shot with his Internal locks.

I'm switching to Staun internals and i am not concerned about the effect of steel in with teh internals.

How do you find the shot if you`re going fast? Water and speed are not good, well more so when you go to stop

Why are you changing to internals POS?

would there be any benifit to the weekend warrior in puting shot in tires? i.e, is it going to do bad things to onroad performance/safty/legalities?

Guts wrote:How do you find the shot if you`re going fast? Water and speed are not good, well more so when you go to stop

Why are you changing to internals POS?

In the USA when we were out at the hammers i could drive pretty well flat out across the dry lake. I'm pretty sure the steel shot just balances out. However it does every now and then decide to say farkyou and just seems to throw out of balance real quick (at say 80kph) that can be a little scary. But i am yet to see anyone in Rockcrawling get to that speed in an event.

Changing to Externals - See my sig line..

About what I thought they'd do make wheels wobble heeps but not sway like water does.

Yeah I seen your sig line and woundered if that was why.

macca81 wrote:would there be any benifit to the weekend warrior in puting shot in tires? i.e, is it going to do bad things to onroad performance/safty/legalities?

It would be a beneifit offroad for a weekend warrior i am sure of that, but see my reply above re on road abilities.

The other thing to consider is that amount of stress inflicted on driveline companants.

i ran about 350grams of steel shot in each 35" simes on mechanical beadlocks both on and off road. Mainly for a auto balance system (to counter the beadlocks) Seems to work fine just rattles a bit when stopping, never had any problems

POS wrote:

ausyota wrote:OK I have a queston.
How does steel shot (or water for that matter) go in tyres that have internal staun type beadlocks?
Do you have any problems with it detroying the tubes?

Cody Waggoneer, Jason Scherrer, Peter Antsinyasac, Ken Blume and so on and so on all run steel shot with Staun internal beadlocks.

Lee Davies (the boss of Staun) has also said that he has never seen an issue come from using steel shot with his Internal locks.

I'm switching to Staun internals and i am not concerned about the effect of steel in with teh internals.

If anything I would have thought the steel shot WITH Staun Internal locks would have been better, as they arent clanging around on the rims

benhl wrote:i ran about 350grams of steel shot in each 35" simes on mechanical beadlocks both on and off road. Mainly for a auto balance system (to counter the beadlocks) Seems to work fine just rattles a bit when stopping, never had any problems

Yes but 350grams is slightly different to 80Kgs of steel shot in each tyre.

benhl wrote:i ran about 350grams of steel shot in each 35" simes on mechanical beadlocks both on and off road. Mainly for a auto balance system (to counter the beadlocks) Seems to work fine just rattles a bit when stopping, never had any problems

We recommend a similiar amount of Magnum to achieve the same results. It is quicker to react to change and does way less damage to the tyre.

So POS how many kilos would you run per tyre?
Does it differ depending on tyre size, weight of the rig etc?
What size steel shot? just the smallest stuff?

Also why the front only? Does it not give benefit in the rear?

Cheers
Paul.

engine is in the back.

nottie wrote:engine is in the back.

OK so a front engined weekend warrior full bodied rig that wanted to try this out for a comp would benefit from using front and rear?

My old buggy (V8 moon buggy) i had over 100kg's in the front tyres. But the whole buggy was just way to heavy.

The new buggy (still a moon buggy) is a lot lighter and heaps less rear weight (in fact its nearly front heavy without weight in the tyres).

I now have about 45kg's in each front tyre and seems to work a treat.

The same principles can be applied to front engine vehicles. Alot of the pro-mod teams here in OZ and all the teams in the USA run weight of some form.

Some only run it in the front and some run it in both front and rear.

For someone playing around with weight in tyres its heaps easier to use water first up. Then once you have a ball park weight that you feel makes a difference to the vehicle then look at switching to steel shot.

The best thing to find out if it works for your vehicle and style of driving (ie rockcrawling of mud bashing or what ever you drive) is to simply play around and see what happens.