Here's a cool idea for a trail-only, low speed, competition use thing:

I saw these a long time ago and then never heard of them agian. What if you build a thing that bolts to your lug nuts that is like a traingular tread thing. You could have a built in planetary thing that gears it down like 10:1 through the hub.

Your traction would be a million times more than a normal tire.

With this, you could climb anything, even if it were wet, icy, muddy, whatever. You wouldn't have to spend as much time/money building suspension because the tread would conform to most surfaces.

Downside? It would be expensive, complex and would definitely require D60's or bigger because of the torque coming back through the grip.

Think about a super built rig though, you have all this stuff to maximize traction and you run it through this little patch of tire that can pop. Think about your aired down swamper versus a 3 foot long tread that's like 13 inches wide...

Is this a good idea or am I just :smokin: ?

Its been done, company called Mattrax in the early 90's, not sure if they are still in buisness or not, havent done a search or anything. Also, toyota made a set, had em on some of the trucks they donated when they sponsored the winter olympics at one time. Cant see em conforming to the terrain as you think, like tank treads, they need bogie wheels to maintain the treads tension and alignment which negates the conformability. Best use Ive seen of em was in deep snow, or sand. I believe Fourwheeler has done a couple reviews of the systems over the years, might take a bit to find any info.

I think they showed those or something similar on Trucks on TNN. They wouldn't work on the rocks, like Kwrangln said, they can't conform to terrain well, but did good in mud and snow.

Used to work at a place that tried selling those, a few years ago. It's a halfway decent idea, but the cost was too much, 10k+. Worked pretty well in snow and mud, as long as the truck would float. Max speed was around 40mph. A big drawback is the weight, just fawks up unsprung weight. I suppose a design geared more towards rocks could work out pretty nice, though...

Here's the link for mattracks. http://www.mattracks.com/

Here's how I thought it could conform to the terrain:

Build it like a big traingle (kinda like the mattrax ones) where the majority of the wieght is supported by the two corners that are on the ground. However, in the middle, have one (or a few) smaller wheels that have a spring between them and the hub. That way, most of the time, the wieght goes through the corners and into the axle, but when the weight lightens up (when the terrain is wierd and there isn't much wieght on the axle, then the center wheel pushes the tread out, confroming to the terrain.

I dunno, it just seems like if someone took the time to build a rock oriented set of tracks the tractions would be way better than tires; it could take rockcrawling somewhere it's never been before.