07-03-2014 00:05

Woolly

Re: pic: Wheel progression

If it were an 8 wheel drive, you could almost get away with swapping the outer and drop center wheels to get more out of them before you switch wheels entirely.
They certainly wear, but from what I've seen the grip is worth it.

07-03-2014 00:30

cadandcookies

Re: pic: Wheel progression

And you really can't beat the price. Even if we have to replace them six times they'll be cheaper than our wheels last year.

07-03-2014 09:14

Anupam Goli

Re: pic: Wheel progression

I'll get a picture of our drivetrain wheels, but we are seeing similar wear on the tire version of the diamond tread on both our practice and competition bot. The grip these suckers had when they weren't worn (and they still have decent grip) was great, but we're going to drive the practice bot a little bit more aggressively than before to see if the wear on the wheel is affecting its performance. It'll be a pain to switch the treads on the wheels, but if we find we're getting significantly better performance using the blue nitrile or SBR tread we used last year, we're ready to do that switch.

07-03-2014 09:35

Lil' Lavery

Re: pic: Wheel progression

With this kind o fwear happening quickly on the diamond tread pattern, why not switch to the W-tread? It' has a higher CoF and is ever so slightly cheaper. The advantage of the VersaWheelDT was supposed to be their resistance to tread wear, but if that's not actually the case, I don't see why you'd use them* over the regular VersaWheels.


*If you're using the 3.25" variant, obviously, it's your only choice.

07-03-2014 09:52

DjScribbles

Re: pic: Wheel progression

We saw similar wear on our wheels... we have a 6WD wide bot (not sure if our center is dropped, I don't believe so).
The center wheels look pretty good, but the outer wheels were about as worn as the 2nd wheel from the left. This was after 4 or 5 hours driving in our shop and ~10 matches at our district event.

07-03-2014 10:12

Aren_Hill

Re: pic: Wheel progression

You still have plenty of tread left on the far left wheel before it is done, did you notice it and then decide it was too worn? or did your drivers say something.

These wheels grip more based on material than the really shallow tread pattern, hence my question.

-Aren

07-03-2014 10:46

audietron

Re: pic: Wheel progression

Our driver was having a lot issues pushing around the point they started to look like that. I see your point so I'm not entirely sure why they were slipping so much more.

07-03-2014 12:29

thefro526

Re: pic: Wheel progression

Aren, is there any reason that a team couldn't treat a 'worn' Versa Wheel DT as being similar to a Colson and cut their own tread pattern into it?...

07-03-2014 12:41

Aren_Hill

Re: pic: Wheel progression

Teams may try whatever they like, as long as they send me pictures
I can't see any reason you couldn't do this.

-Aren

10-03-2014 10:07

Bryan1625

Re: pic: Wheel progression

I was going to say something that one of our mentors said Aren said but looks like Aren beat me to it d:

18-03-2014 16:32

Matt_Boehm_329

Re: pic: Wheel progression

Would the wear nullify the whole premise of the drop center regardless of wheel material?