Right on, so I had a chance this weekend to get out and see what the new tires would do. Here is a quick set of bullet points, from my experience.
1. Appearance - These things are crazy looking. Like cartoonish monster truck tires.
2. Size - Roughly 2 inches wider than the stock Kraton tires. With what looks like enough rubber to make dinner plates if they balloon bad. The car is almost as wide as it is long now. B comparison, they are about 1/2 inch more in diameter, than the stocks.
3. Weight - WAAAY heavier than the stock wheels. I no longer have an everyday need for a scale that weighs in grams or ozs, so I have no exact weight, but they are pretty heavy.
4. Quality of materials - They rubber feels a little soft, and more so in the middle of the tread than on the side walls. The wheels look to be as solid as any of the wheels I've tried. and with the huge sidewalls I know the wheels aren't going to suffer from jumps.
5. Tread - Similar to the Back Flips, in that it's a bunch of big square knobs. And the tread is tall, which I'm hoping gives me some extra wear.
6. Running on 4S - I could tell the car was working a little harder to get them turning, but nothing to worry about, I just noticed a slight difference. The balloon on 4s was minimal. Only the center line of tread swelled up a bit, and the seem to grip the grass really well. I made some transfers from grass to asphalt and they did great in soaking up the bumps without bounce. A ton of grip was lost on the asphalt, but the car did a great 100 foot drift, before going up the other curb and into a neighbor's yard, and cutting a Jade Plant off at the ground. Lucky the neighbor likes me. On 4 S these are fun for messing around in smaller spaces or off stairs. I also got a chance to do some Crawling, on 4S. The knobs work well at grabbing the rocks and give enough grip to pull the kraton up some pretty steep angles, with out spinning the tires. took some throttle control, but was fun. I ran it down some soccer fields yesterday and they grip the grass well, and the extra width and weight made it impossible to traction roll. And on braking into a corner the front end looked awesome digging in and holding the turn.
7. Running on 6S - OH MAN. So these are totally different tires on 6S. I was at an athletic complex and had the run of 3 empty soccer fields, yesterday. I knew I'd have the chance to get some long speed runs in and that I could get the car flying. I got more than I expected. The grip is the short groomed grass was AWESOME. Wheel spin was non-existent. I was starting out slow making sure I had my finger under control before I let her off the leash. I also wanted to see how bad and when the ballooning started. Anyway, I really noticed the grip when at about half throttle, and minimal ballooning on the tires, I gave it a little punch and the car stood on it rear end and gained 10MPH in less than a second. Ok, now it's a test to see what they can handle. I had plenty of room to get up to speed, and I needed it too. Even at 3/4 throttle, any fast throttle movement would cause a wheelie.
BALLOONING-
Yeah well these things balloon at speed – A LOT. Being so wide they have the extra rubber to make straight up dinner plates. On an Outcast, the front and rear wheels might even rub. I bet these were nothing short of 12 inches across. So that said, at speed, I has ZERO CONTROL, but man that extra circumference really gets her moving. It was odd looking at the Kraton, coming at me at 50+ MPH, with the chassis, 7 inches off the ground, and the front wheels still on the ground. Then it would wheelie. Worse in one direction than the other. Then it dawned on me. The Front T-bone bumper is an anti-spoiler. That thing is up front, and just lifting the front end on the air. So going with the wind it was easier to keep the front end down, and going into the wind, it wanted to wheelie a lot sooner. But in either direction the front end would lift off before I got to full throttle. Mind you I am running the stock pinion.
Rotational Force. Since these are so heavy I wasn’t even thinking of doing any big jumping on the first day out and figured these would not be my big jump tires anyway. But I did find a little bump that I thought might give a me a couple feet of air. Well the runway was short and cement, then transferred to a 2 foot high grass bump. So I had to gun it up the grass, to get any speed. The tires gripped so well, that it pulled a back flip, no higher than a foot off the ground. That got me thinking, could a Kraton do a standing backflip? Yep, floor it, and the tires grip, wheelie, fronts balloon and carry the front even higher, rears balloon raising the entire car another 2 inches, and it flips without even hitting the spoiler on the ground. I thought that was only possible with an Outcast. Then I found a little slope maybe 6 feet high with about a 5 foot rough asphalt runway. I could motor to the edge, then gun it and it would backflip on command. I almost gotta double flip but I panicked and let go of the throttle.
My final thoughts on these are that they are good enough tires to bash 4S all day, lots of cushion, and are good for flips given the extra ballooning power. On 6S they are exciting and really give that added speed because of the ballooning, but considering the lack of control, are not suited for high speeds. I am glad to have them, but I doubt I will use the on the regular.
I am going to try to run some 80 lb braided fishing line around the threads and see if I can reduce the balloon. If I can they may stay on the car longer.