August 23rd, 2011, 02:44 PM #
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Waszak1977
First Name: ╠══MIKELANGELO══╣
My RZR: ╠═o8 FULLBORE TURBO═╣
Member #18310
Join Date: Sep 2010
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Tire/Wheel Weight & Rotational Mass VS. HP!
OK, I finally got digging into how much Horsepower (HP) one loses for the weight of adding bigger tires &/or just changing out tires & Wheels. This does not just go for "Duner's".....
At first I didn't know if this was rated as Crank HP numbers or RWHP numbers, UPDATE, It is RWHP Numbers! Also at the end I'm going to address some questions of my own as not everything "adds up". Read on, you'll see what I mean..
A huge thanks to
Dave Kuskie of
Fullerton Sand Sports -
Distributer of Performance Tires & Wheels
I was careful to take everything
word for word on the accounts & testimony from the SXS Mania DVD Produced by Greg Painter.
I know that the numbers are not exact & scientific but do get us close..
So here we go, I knew that the weight of your wheels & tires combined had an effect on the amount of HP & performance of our RZR's but just not as much as this! Now this is geared for "Duners" (
but only at the beginning), but I will close this with adding in accounts of my own RZR running semi-heavy Kenda Executioners (Medium Mud Tires) rated a step(Class) below Silverbacks, Terminators ect.. I'll even talk about the Silverbacks.
Performance: Wheel weight alone is huge, Often it gets overlooked as most worry about the weight of the tires. This should change your thinking. Be it your wheels are Stock & Steel, Aluminum Milled, Spun Aluminum, or Cast.. This difference is staggering! I could do a whole thread on just wheel weights, let alone tires.
The following is info, ratio's, ect.. From SXS Mania
Rotational mass on a UTV is huge for every 1 pound that you add to the back of a tire over another set your basically losing 1 HP then you multiply that X 4 so you can imagine how much advantage there would be running a lighter tire & wheel set.
For you Duners'
If you're in virgin pure sand all the time & you don't have to worry about sticks, stones, or junk that will be in the sand, you can run a thinner treaded tire. Which reduces the weight, the rotational mass & improves your performance of your UTV or ATV. Anything that's on a tire from the Mohawk(Picture's Below) to a paddle is
all rolling resistance the more paddle's & the more lugs you have on the Mohawk (or any tire for that matter) that's rolling resistance
which pulls the power of the vehicle down,
the more paddles you put on there the slower it will run Mile a Hour(MPH).
The wider the tire is
the more rolling resistance it has because it flattens the paddle out & puts more square inches of paddle in the sand. It also slows the vehicle down,
but you have to figure out where that happy medium is for the right amount of hook-up, right amount of climb, right amount of performance, & still pull the right performance MPH for you. The guys that are wanting to get the fastest tire possible want to run the least amount of paddles as they can to get the car to leave on & the least amount of rolling resistance & a narrower tire. The narrower the tire the less rolling resistance there is because it crowns the paddle and it lifts the paddle out of the sand the smoothies on the front have no rolling resistance they run faster MPH in a straight line. Handling in the sand that's moist, the smoothies actually still turn pretty decent even in 2wd when it get lighter & fluffier the smoothies will push a lot (in 2wd). You run it in 4wd & you got it turning & actually helps pull the cars around.
Skat Trak Smoothies, Skat Trak MoHawks, & Skat Traks Paddle's
So taking this information from Dave Kuskie @ Fullerton Sand Sports & Applying it to the everyday rider it can help us make better decisions as to what we want. Some just want big heavy mud tires & don't really care, After all, How can we make it through the Mud w/o the big huge bulky tires.... Well I'm sure about 90% of you have been to Monster Truck races & seen the tractor pulls.. I'd safely say 99.9% of them where more worried about how much horse power was spinning them wheels then how they "dug in".. Also most had the same tires anyways, Kinda like Silverbacks at Mud-Nats.. HP Wins..
Now my Kenda Executioners (Considered Medium Class Mud Tires) are sized & weighed at:
Not counting Wheels
27x10-12 @
31 Lbs. ea. X2
27X12-12 @
36 Lbs. ea. X2
Total weight 134Lbs. Total @ 72 Lbs just rear.
If I decide to Purchase the Maxxis Bighorn 2.0's Lets see the difference..
**Now If I do, This time I'm getting all 4 tires the same size so its easy if I need to use my spare.
Maxxis Bighorn 2.0's
26X9-12 @
21.2 Lbs ea. X4
Total weight 84.8 Lbs. Total @ 42.4 Lbs. Just rear.
Total savings of all 4 tires is 49.2 Lbs. (Or according to the above statements
just short of 50HP) Now, More practically lets look at just rear wheel drive.
Total savings of just the rear tires is 29.6 Lbs. (Or according to the above statements
just short of 30HP)
OK, Going one step further... The Gorilla Silverback
32x10-14 @
52 Lbs. ea. X4
Total weight 208 Lbs. Total @ 104 Lbs. just rear.
Ok now if I took the same comparison to the Maxxis Bighorn 2.0's then the Total (savings) weight differance on all 4 tires is 123.2 Lbs., If I go off the equation/ratio that "basically" every pound added to a tire/wheel setup costs you 1HP then we have a mathematical issue as the RZR doesn't have 208 Hp let alone should be able to run them if all of this was that "Simple".
The best I can come up with is that there is a range in the RZR's (doesn't matter which RZR or UTV for that matter), but there's a range that is actually effected by the weight of these tires/wheels that can be calculated. Dave @ Fullerton Sand Sports gave us a baseline to work with sand tires. The weights on those setups he puts together with spun Aluminum DWT Wheels might actually be dead on for that category.
Remember he said "Basically" a loss or gain of 1 HP per pound..
I decided to start this thread as I'm sure not everyone has seen the DVD & we as members & a community can add to it. If you have tried different setups on a Dyno & know what different weights the wheel/tire combo's has made on the actual HP be it RWHP or at the crank it welcome here.
Lastly, I've tried to remember but my memory is a bit on the lacking side but I did see at one time a way that you could mount a wheel & tire to a machine, even a home-made "meter"
to gauge just how much force and/or energy it takes to spin that wheel. Just looking at it that way it's obvious the improvements over using lightweight wheels & tires far out weight the benefits of adding bolt on engine improvements with outrageous claims. When you can spend $900 bucks on a Dual exhaust thinking you are getting
5-HP in gains,
Turns out a lighter set of tires might just get you much more than that....