Mud tires: stay away from narrow?

[jkilday4]

I'm thinking about getting a set of mud tires; the trails I run are mainly packed to loose dirt and of course mud when it's been raining. I want the jeep to get through mud better. Currently I go out with my dd 32x11.50x15 BFG AT's. I've heard several times that the smaller contact patches of more narrow tires can help in some circumstances (more pounds of down-force per square inch of contact is the standard reason given).

I noticed Super Swamper makes a tire in 32x9.50. Would this sort of tire enhance mud performance? Or does the 'narrower is better' philosophy only apply to rock-crawling or other off-roading scenarios?

[fwak]

Think of it this way.....It's all resistance wider=more resistance and narrow=less resistance. You kinda have your thinking backwards, wider is better for rock crawler b/c you have a better footprint and more traction on a very slippery and steep surface. With mud if your just gunna mud and do trails I'd say get a 33x10.50. It will grip well on the trail and will scim through mud b/c of the less resistance. If any1 has anything else to add go for it, I prolly forgot something.

[jkilday4]

Yeah, I guess my thinking is definitely 'muddied' at this point - thanks for trying to help.

I've had trouble on both long, slick muddy trails and also gotten stuck recently in a pretty deep mud hole (who knows if I would have made it through with mud tires - surely would have gotten further). Most of the time these trails have detours around the biggest mudholes so maybe I ought to just concentrate on slick-trail performance rather than the mudholes; I don't see myself doing any big time mud-bogging. Would one tire width be better than another with these considerations?

I also do encounter the occasional rock-climb on the trails I run - not a big part of my trailin...

Any other thoughts?

[goodtimes]

Contact pressure is as important for playing in the mud as it is for rock crawling. The difference is that when you are playing in mud, you need one of two things....either you need contact pressure low enough and enough horsepower that you can literally stay on top of the mud (as seen in competitive mud racing in the traditional stadium races), or you want enough contact pressure that your tires sink through the slick stuff to find traction *under* the mud. For those of us who play in the "real world" (not man made mud pits), using a wide paddle tire and stupid amounts of horsepower doesn't work because there are too many things to run into (trees), we have to turn corners, etc. In short, narrow is better. Also pay attention to void space (amount of tire face that is not covered by the tread pattern). The higher the better. The smaller the void space, the more horsepower you are going to need in order to spin the tires to clean the mud out of the tread.

Even with rock crawling, you don't often see tires more than about 12.5" wide. Some of the taller sizes (40, 42") get a little wider, but not much. No matter how big your contact patch is, you need to be able to put pressure on it in order to have traction.