No, not another typical tire question about what swims and what doesn't!
I'm wondering if anyone has ever tried the "fender trick" that you used to see in SAE Baja water events?
For the uniformed, it's basically a fairly close fitting fender on the rear wheels with a "deflector" pointed out the back. What it does is prevent the tire from throwing water forward (which would counter the rearward thrust the spinning tire creates underwater) by "scraping" the water off the tire and forcing it to be thrown rearward, creating forward thrust. Or at least reducing the rearward thrust resulting from the water being thrown forward by the spinning tire.
Here's a vid:
Not too shabby for what is essentially a go cart with floats strapped to it!
They don't have the water event anymore (they got rid of it in 2012) but as you can see it seems to be quite effective. Some even have reported "non-swimming" tires working reasonably well once fendered, with semi-swimming tires showing even better gains.
But they may be a problem in swamp or deep mud if that's what you normally travel.
I was just curious if anyone had tried it as my argo currently has 8 "knobby" tires on it and doesn't swim a damn with them. You get in water and it just goes around in circles if you are trying to use the tires for propulsion (I currently have an outboard for any length of water travel).
I thought I might make a temporary "scraper" of some sort and see if it makes it swim at all, for curiosity's sake as much as anything else. With no suspension on the Argo yet, it would seem a relatively easy thing to try. Just bolt it on (prob use the bearing housing bolts,I have to change out the rear set of bearings anyways) and give 'er a go! If it doesn't work; pull 'em off again and no harm done. I'll keep the outboard on for testing though. Don't want to get into the river and end up in the bay of Fundy! LOL!
I also ran across the "penguin" amphib, which apparently used "paddles" on the rims and tire scrapers as well:
That's an interesting method of getting water propulsion as well and would also seem to be a reasonably easy modification.
If either of these offer any improvement, it can only make it better when i finally switch to a swimming tire. Although, only ever going to get so much speed out of a displacement hull, like an Argo...
