Tire Choice

[airlina]

Bill, Like you, when I ordered and built my Series 5 ,15 years ago,I went with the 8.50 treaded tires for the same reasons you specified, however that turned out to be a bad idea. With those tires, landing on pavement was always a bout with mr.toads wild ride. Reason was that those tires weigh a bunch and required a lot of force to spin up on initial touchdown sending you on the forementioned wild ride. Next tire was a treaded 8.00 size tire with a much reduced weight and the problem went away. I fell prey last summer to big tire envy like a bunch of other guys and went with the Desser 8.50 smoothies and absolutely love em. Same weight as the 8.00 treaded that I replaced (for sale by the way) and no surprises on touchdown on pavement. I do 75% grass ,25% hard surfaces and though I only have 50 hours on them , no wear is evident plus they look cool ,and my cruise only went doen a couple MPH. hope this helps Bruce N199CL

[Hockeystud87]

airlina did you go tubed or tubeless? I just got those tires for the KF 4 and i'm going tubeless.

[airlina]

Hey Al, been following your thread about going tubeless, and being raised a good Christian I couldn't bring myself to be going around tubeless so I am a devout tuber. I run my tires on cleveland wheels with pressures at 14 PSI and have a silver sharpie witness mark on my tires and wheels that I check on preflight to make sure That there is no misalignment of tire and tube. No problems to date. Bruce N199CL

[ken nougaret]

Bruce, how much are you asking for the 800's?

[Slyfox]

I personally feel that the 21 inch tire on a kitfox is just fine. I flew most the life between me and my kitfox 14years on 21's. but the introduction of the nanco tires were not so pleasing to me, I needed something better. than come the 27.5 tire from desser that took me a long period of time to finally get. these are much better priced than the Alaska brand tire. 500dollars each. I thought they were a bit pricy still. I finally took the plunge and yes I am very happy with them. I could have gotten away with a 21 inch tire no problem with my flying but I wanted a better tire that didn't bounce around from out of round. I truly love the tires and the wear is very good on pavement. grass is such a joy. I had a emergency landing in a field and it was doubly nice to have the big tires. so the 22's should work out real nice without blowing your budget.

[PapuaPilot]

I am using the Desser 850x6 (22") smoothie tires for the reasons stated by airlina and jiott. I don't think there is anywhere I would go that these tires wouldn't be sufficient. They hold up very well with landing on pavement which is over 50% of my landings.

I run them from 11-14 psi and have experienced a little slippage. I put slippage marks on tire and have gotten 1/4 to 3/8" movement in the course of a year (I fix it at the annual inspection). Like others have said . . . watch the valve stem.

BTW I got rid of the normal 8.50x6 tires that came with my plane (I bought mine as an unfinished project). Again, this was at the recommendation of others on this forum. They were very heavy and stiff.

[Fdxflier]

Thanks for all the input. I think I will change my order and get the smoothies.