Grampa's Cj2a

Over the holidays I took Grampa’s Jeep, equipped with the dual wheels on all four corners, for a test ride on some snow. The snow on the road we tried was dry powder snow, packed by snowmobiles. Off of the packed road it was soft and deep, no crust, just good old Rocky Mountain powder about a foot and a half deep.

I was actually pretty disappointed in how the dual wheel NDT’s performed on the snow. It almost felt like the NDT’s on the packed powder were acting like slicks rather that any type of traction tire. The solid bar in the center of the NDT seemed to keep any of the lugs from biting in to the snow at all. I am pretty certain that my wife’s all-wheel –drive Hyundai Santa Fe could have made a better go of it on that particular surface.  At one point I got one wheel off the packed part of the road and was immediately sucked in and stuck in the deep powder.

This experience has me rethinking my tire setup.

I have been pretty set in keeping NDT’s  on Grampa’s Jeep because they just look right. I feel that fatter, modern tires take away from the look of a CJ2A that is still trying to be a CJ2A and not something else. Just as one would probably not put big performance tires on a Model T that was still a Model T and not a hot rod that had some Model T roots.  (I like them both, but they are different vehicles.)

The NDT’s have performed well for me climbing slick rock and I have the most fun when I am rock climbing, but there is usually some sand dunes or at least loose sandy trails around the rocks, and I thought that the dual wheel set up might help me avoid getting bogged down in the sand. I still haven’t had an opportunity to test the dual wheels on the sand so hopefully I will get some positive results there.

I don’t do a lot of winter wheeling, but I had hope that the dual wheels would help. Last spring we were on this same road but the snow was different. It had daytime melt and night freezing so there was a thick crust on the top. My partner with big wide tires on his Wrangler stayed on top of the crust, while I broke through with my single NDT’s, so there may still be some winter usefulness for the dual wheels, but not on packed powder or icy conditions.

Like I said, I am now pondering my tire choices and wondering if I should go a different direction. I could maybe try siping and see if that makes a difference. I don’t want to do anything that would hurt my rock climbing performance, but man I hate it that a Samaria with chubby street tires can beat me on a snow covered road.  

This picture is from last spring when the tires broke through the crust and the frame was sitting on it so I could go nowhere.

This is how stuck you can get in the loose sand with NTD’s