My cousin has a '96 220 with slick tires (never had any problems and it runs great)and I have a Sportsman 335 with good tires, and that thing will just about go anywhere in 2-wheel with slick tires that I do in 2-wheel with good tires! It is an amazing little quad. There's one big mud hole on one of our trails that I rutted and spun out pretty deep to see if I could get him stuck,ha! He started in and started to spin and geared up to 4th or so and pegged it. It spun like mad and kept goin', at one point inches at a time.But nevertheless,made it through.

 

The littlest Bayou is making it through the mud hole because of its superior flotation.

Flotation, or more properly buoyancy, is the tendency of an object to resist sinking into a surrounding fluid medium. In this instance the object is a tire and the medium is the mud. But it could just as easily be a boat in the water or a balloon in the air.

The lesser the weight per unit area of the object in question in relation to the medium, the greater the buoyancy. Whether it is a tire attached to an off-road vehicle or a tennis shoe attached to a human foot, the lower the weight per unit area, the higher the flotation.

In this case the two vehicles in question have nearly identical “footprints”. The Bayou uses 8-inch wide front tires (21x8x9) and 10-inch wide rear tires (22x10x10), while the Sportsman uses 7-inch wide front tires (23x7x10) and 11-inch wide rear tires (24x11x10). The big difference is in the weight of the two vehicles. The Bayou 220 is listed as having a 404 pound dry weight, and the Sportsman 335 is listed as having a 670 pound dry weight (exceptionally heavy for a mid-displacement quad).

For the sake of illustration, let us assume that each tire has a uniform shape and is as wide as stated by the manufacturer, that each tire has a 4-inch long contact patch (the contact patch is probably bigger, but we’re being conservative in our estimate), that each quad has a perfect 50/50 front to rear weight distribution, and that the mud has a uniform viscosity.

Now we’ll calculate the weight per unit area factor of each quad as follows: vehicle weight divided by the sum of the front and rear contact patch areas.

Bayou = 404/((2(8*4))+(2(10*4)) = 2.805 pounds per square inch

Sportsman = 670/((2(7*4))+(2(11*4)) = 4.653 pounds per square inch

As can be seen from the above calculations the Sportsman exerts 166% (4.653/2.805) more downward force than does the Bayou.

It is the Bayou’s 14% wider front tires (8-inch vs. 7-inch), that help to keep the front end from digging in, and much lighter weight which allow your cousin’s bald-tired Bayou to get through that nasty mud hole. Just think of the places he could go if he put a new set of tires on it.

Army Man

Caveat: As the EPA would say. “These figures are for comparison purposes only. Your actual flotation may vary”.

 

Even though it can't pull much because of its slim weight, it is still awesome in the mud.That is definately the reason it goes so well.