After spending hundreds of dollars of A-arms and spacers, shocks and stabilizers, not to mention cylinders and pipes, and carbs and clutches, coughing up a few hundred more is a hard pill to swallow. But in the case of our own project mini, adding some bling was the icing on the cake and truly transformed our machine, visibly and otherwise, into a bona fide race quad. The installation of tires and wheels offers the following opportunities: the ability to affect track width by changing the wheel offset (as a supplement or substitute for wheel spacers), less weight, and a racier look! The table below summarizes these advantages with hard figures. Front End 
| click here to show table, or here to show gragh,
or here to show the tires (shown in order) |
For the 50 and 90cc Asian youth ATVs, one of the most popular tire and wheel combinations is the 10" Douglas aluminum wheel along with ITP Holeshot tires. The Holeshot tires (far right bar) are used exclusively as a front tire and are available in a 19" tall size, comparable to the typical stock 90cc tire. At only about 1/2 lb weight savings over stock, there's only a slight weight advantage over the stock tire/wheel setup (per side). The offset on the 10" Douglas wheel, which is the measurement from either outside edge of the wheel to the mounting surface, is similar to the stock wheel. These wheels are offered as a 3"/2" offset which can be run either way (valves stems in or out). The wheels are designed to be run with the larger offset to the inside thus reducing the scrub radius and easing steering effort. But by switching the wheels around you can increase the front track width by a total of 4". Be careful when stacking offset wheels on top of wheel spacers since the farther the tire's contact patch moves from the center of the spindle's rotation axis the twitchier and harder to steer the machine will seem due to the increased scrub radius. wheel bolt pattern table | | | front pattern | rear
pattern | | Arctic Cat | 4x115 | 4x115 | | Alpha, Polaris, Xtreme, DRR, Eton, Jehm, Dinli,Bombardier, | 4x110 | 4x110 | | Kasea, LRX | 4x110 | 4x100 |
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The other front end option is running a smaller 8" diameter Douglas wheel with either the 16" or 18" tall Carlisle Snow Hog tire. There's a significant weight savings (as much as 3.6 lbs per side) as well as providing a lower center of gravity. Of course, you'd want to match the rear end with tires either the same size or smaller. Note that on some minis (Kasea, LRX) the front hubs need to be machined down to allow fitment of the aftermarket wheels due to the "squared" pattern on the stock front wheel. Click here to see the modification. The hubs must be removed, the studs pressed out, and machined down on a lathe to the ID of the new wheel. Some mini quad performance shops routinely offer this service, or you can just take your hubs and a wheel to local machine shop along with a dozen donuts and a few bucks. Rear End Douglas rear wheels are offered as 8" dia by 6" wide, with the width split as 2"/4" or 3"/3". The 2"/4" option would offer 1" additional track width per side versus the evenly split 3"/3" option. Wheels are only offered in the standard 0.125" Blue Label, which is quite adequate for most mini quad applications. Douglas Wheels are 6061 heat treated aircraft grade aluminum. For the rear the Snow Hogs are a popular choice since they have an aggressive pattern, and a flat, low profile cross section which gives the quad more stability during cornering. These tires are offered in a 16" and 18" diameter, although the 18" tire is actually only about 16.5" tall (the 16" is just shy of 15.5 inches).
Where to get your parts To contact Douglas Wheel about your needs, you can visit their website at www.douglaswheel.com. If you're ready to place an order Recreation Tire has some of the best prices around. |
