pic: Concept 8wd Drivetrain

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

Smaller wheels also let you set your whole robot down lower to the ground (low center of gravity, yay!) and they allow you to make your wheelbase about 2" longer than one with 6" wheels (less tippy, yay!). There's lots of good reasons to use them.

Ground clearence and wheel size have little to do with each other. Relationship of the frame to the axles has more to do with ground clearence and CoG than wheel size. We've used 6" pneumatic wheels for the last few years, but have had less than 1" ground clearence since our axles have been positioned above our frame.

The Longer wheelbase of a 4" wheel is offset (in the case of this thread) by the number of wheels. The biggest advantage I've seen with smaller wheels is that they are lighter.