Chaparral Motorsports Sand Tire Test Intro
What's the best thing about the end of summer? Well if you're a
sand enthusiast or desert rat the end of summer means it's finally
cooling down enough to start preparing the side-by-side for some
duning and hooning. Southern California is home to the largest sand
dune mass and one of the largest OHV recreation areas for sand
dunes in the country, the Imperial Sand Dunes aka Glamis. However,
due to temps well over 100 degrees throughout summer, it's just too
unbearable for most people to even think about venturing out to the
dunes-we are not like most people!
With our reputation as one of the largest powersports tire
retailers in the country, we like to continually research and learn
about the products we sell so that we can help our customers make
informed purchases. So naturally with sand season right around the
corner we decided to head out to Glamis, in the middle of August,
when temperatures were going to be upwards of 105 degrees, to put
some of the more popular UTV sand tires we
sell to the test.
The goal of this sand tire test was to pit six different paddles
tires against each other to see which performed best out in the
dunes. The tires we chose were: AMS Sand King, STI Sand Drifter,
System 3 DS340, Quadboss QBT346,
EFX SandSlinger, and GMZ Sand Stripper XL. To keep things fun,
fair, and interesting we brought along two of the exact same
side-by-sides, 2018 Can-Am Maverick X3 xrs', so that we could run
the tires in head to head battles. Also, knowing that not everyone
likes to run sand tires and some duners will just air down their
stock or aftermarket offroad tires, we included Maxis Big Horn 2.0
tires (stock on the
Cam-Am Maverick X3 xrs) and a set of Tensor Regulators (one of
the most popular Offroad tires we sell) in the tests.
On August 21st once we had everything figured out and loaded into
trailers we hit the road and headed to Glamis-well actually to
Brawley where we spent the night before testing. Then bright-it was
actually still dark- and early on the 23rd with the
temperature projected to hit 108 in Glamis we setup a makeshift pit
lane at Hugh T. Osborne Lookout Park.
Next, we ventured out into the sandy abyss to find a couple places
to set up some testing courses. Most people like to push the limits
of their sanity and side by sides by climbing up the steepest dunes
they can find. While that would have been a fun and exciting test,
we had a lot of tire changing and back and forth from the pits to
do so we decided to keep it close and established a 300-foot hill
climb up Competition Hill. Not the steepest dune in Glamis but it's
got a decent incline and would allow us to see how fast (or slow)
each tire could crest the mound. Then we marked out a 1/8th-mile
drag strip across the base of Comp Hill so we could see which tires
hooked up best, dug the vehicle into the hole shot quickest and got
the car skimming across the top of the flat at full speed.
It was a long day, especially since two cars got stuck within the
first 20 minutes on the sand and we proceeded to get stuck a couple
more times throughout the day. The temperature hit all of the 108
degrees that was expected, but we managed to test all the tires and
made it back to San Bernardino before sun down. You can read about
the the Hill Climb results
here. Check out the Drag results
here. results Or just sit back and enjoy this teaser video.
