I am tracking my pavement landings with Goodyear 26” Tundra smooth tires. You can create a custom field in the logbook section of ForeFlight that will track the number of landings to estimate the life of these tires for pilots/owners who fly off of pavement and soft fields. May be helpful if someone would track their pavement landings on their Alaskan Bush wheels too. I get asked frequently by Maule and all back country pilots what tires to buy and the reasons. I have 82 landings on pavement since installation September 1.

I can definitely see how tracking the number of pavement landings with Bushwheels could be useful. Especially if enough people did it (and shared the info) so we could have useful data on how long, on average, these tires will last in that use environment.

With the 26” Goodyears, I think you’d be hard-pressed to ever wear a set out. Those things are made out of iron, and they never seem to wear appreciably, at least not that I have seen.

I think this offers a great opportunity for empirical data, and a fringe sports betting arena. I’ve got $30 that they reach >234,567 landings before showing cord.

I bet I can do it in one…

Andy Young wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:09 pm

I bet I can do it in one…

Now that was funny

Empirical data, come on man, we are Maule Pilots. That was funny. Seriously though my Husky, Cessna and CCub friends say they wear aout ABI tires on pavement but no one seems to know time frames or number of landings. I may get a set of 31s to swap out with my Goodyears and continue to track both.

I've had my ABI 31" bushwheels on since 2016 with about 800 landings on mostly grass or packed dirt/gravel but some pavement and there's no cord showing.

As another data point, I replaced my 29" bushwheels (non- heavy tread) a year ago. They were new in 2015, and both just starting to show tread after right about 800 landings. Of those, about 80% were gravel/small loose rock areas (variety of gravel bars), 15% beach landings, and the rest mostly on grass with a small handful of times on pavement.

I think the biggest wear factor for me with those was doing tight turns while parking on a small paved ramp area for the first several years I had them. I've since refined my parking technique to plan on much wider turns, which should significantly decrease tire wear. My replacement tires are 31" ABW heavy tread versions, so (fingers crossed) they should last even longer.