Off Road Tire Test - Monster Mash

The super swamper bogger is the preeminent mud tire from interco and the 54-inch variant holds true to that title. With such a massive diameter the tires roll easily across anything. The mud pit wasn't a problem and the rocks didn't have holes big enough to swallow these. The traction is acceptable and the rolling radius makes short work of almost any obstacle. In fact our biggest complaint with this tire is the lateral traction was a bit lacking mainly due to the tread pattern that is so good in mud. However, our initial impression was that the lugs on the bogger were too small for such a big-diameter tire and that they looked like they should be on a 44-inch bogger. However this didn't seem to be an issue at all with the tire and was entirely an aesthetic complaint.

The super swamper irok's description on interco's web site is the result of years of tire development in order to produce an all-around mud, snow, and rock tire and it does that very well. Our 49-inch iroks flexed great and folded around rocks, resulting in awesome traction. Though heavy on the 20-inch rims, they still flung a great deal of mud and seemed the perfect tire when mixed with a set of rockwell axles. These were some of the only tires that actually measured true to their size listing. In the loose rocky hillclimb, they stumbled a little and just dug in rather than climbed, but the big fixed boulder field was their home. In the mud they went just as far as the ltbs, but wouldn't back out when needed, which is odd since we later realized the directional tread was mounted backwards.

The original super swamper is still a favorite tire amongst wheelers, but we weren't as impressed by it as we had hoped to be. Though they did well in the rocky hillclimb, they didn't seem to have the traction in the actual rockcrawl section. Also in the loose hillclimb, the tsls matched the iroks in distance, but couldn't match the irok for distance in the mud bog. However, the tsls did seem to clean better than the irok in the mud, so we assume the lack of ground clearance was a factor in its short run. In the end, the tsl will always be a great all-around tire, and a classic tread pattern that-although it may be surpassed by some-is still better than many in the mud-tire market.

In the mud pit our tires ranked from longest run to shortest in the following order.

So we collected seven different tires and we wrestled most of them onto rims and then onto our test mule to see how they would do in the rocks, dirt, and mud. We found that big tires can easily roll over big holes and they all offered over 11 inches of ground clearance under our differentials. All of the tires did great, and many amazed us in ways we didn't expect, but if we have to choose one above the pack for best allaround performance, it has to be the ltb. This big monster of a tire is tough looking, has lugs as big as your fist, and did great all around. However, it was followed very closely by the irok, a tire that offers some true height, and we found the irok to be cheaper than its slightly smaller brother. We would take either set for our next monster-truck build; just give us some rockwells, a hot v-8, and parts tough enough to handle big rubber.