How To Add Weight to Your Crawler Wheels

[WickedFog]

We had a contest where we tried to see how steep our WPL crawlers would climb using a towel or carpet on a flat road surface. There are a bunch of vids on YT and FB under the hashtag #WPLCC. When I added BB's in my front tires it actually climbed a steeper angle (close to 69°). But I never did any real world comparisons with it climbing over rocks and such. I don't think it would have worked good in all situations, such as it would really hurt performance on a steep, slippery surface.

I learned there is a point where the more weight you add, the worse traction is. Because as the angle increases, gravity is pulling your truck down the incline more, and towards the surface less. So adding weight after a point just helps gravity pull you down the incline. It is a balacing act, where traction becomes the limiting factor.

My arguement was adding water was not good because as people have learned it is best not to let water get in your tires (why people now vent their tires). But adding weight inside the tires is nothing new. There are lots of arguements both ways. What works for one truck doesn't work on another. I tried to stay out of this a bit because this is one of those things where people get in a pissing contest, and nobody has proof either way. I have seen this type of arguement a few times now.

I personally know a little about what was working on my rig, right before I burned up the motor. It was actually a fun little experiment. But adding the BB's did help up to a point. Then it just made things worse.

 

[SnowCamo]

We had a contest where we tried to see how steep our WPL crawlers would climb using a towel or carpet on a flat road surface. There are a bunch of vids on YT and FB under the hashtag #WPLCC. When I added BB's in my front tires it actually climbed a steeper angle (close to 69°). But I never did any real world comparisons with it climbing over rocks and such. I don't think it would have worked good in all situations, such as it would really hurt performance on a steep, slippery surface.

I learned there is a point where the more weight you add, the worse traction is. Because as the angle increases, gravity is pulling your truck down the incline more, and towards the surface less. So adding weight after a point just helps gravity pull you down the incline. It is a balacing act, where traction becomes the limiting factor.

My arguement was adding water was not good because as people have learned it is best not to let water get in your tires (why people now vent their tires). But adding weight inside the tires is nothing new. There are lots of arguements both ways. What works for one truck doesn't work on another. I tried to stay out of this a bit because this is one of those things where people get in a pissing contest, and nobody has proof either way. I have seen this type of arguement a few times now.

I personally know a little about what was working on my rig, right before I burned up the motor. It was actually a fun little experiment. But adding the BB's did help up to a point. Then it just made things worse.

That's the fun part about crawling. Tuning the rig to run its best for the terrain. There's always a point where things fail to function as designed.