Narrow ATV Wheels Great For Trenching

Narrow ATV Wheels Great For Trenching ATV'S ATV'S 34-4-11 After Dave Horn started building off-road racing wheels for ATV's, local farmers started using them as trenching wheels instead. Now he can hardly keep up with orders, especially when it rains. "We'll have 500 wheels on hand, and then we get five to 10 in. of rain, and 300 wheels will be gone the next day," says Horn. While there are other trenching wheels on the market, Horn says customers like his for their greater width and suspension. Horn uses standard 19-in. motocross style, motorcycle tires that he mounts on rims he builds in his machine shop. "Instead of a 2-in. trench that fills in quickly with mud and straw, our wheels leave a 4 to 5-in. trench up to 12 in. deep that stays open longer," says Horn. "Farmers complained to me that the solid metal trenching tires they tried made for very rough riding on the road. A lot of guys have fields spread out across 20 miles. With ours, they can drive comfortably down the road. They're rated for 85 mph by the DOT." Horn has a nifty way of dealing with different ATV wheel bolt patterns. He makes a wheel with a bolt-in center. This allows him to mass-produce one standard wheel. Customers can easily swap wheels from one ATV to another when they trade. "We tell customers to just send in their old centers, and we'll send them a new set," says Horn. He also guarantees the trenching ability of the wheels. Skeptics had questioned if they would go deep enough. He says he has yet to buy any back. "If the soil is wet enough, they will go axle deep," he says. "Yet, getting stuck is almost a non-issue. Guys tell me they can go through more mud with our tires in 2-WD than they can with stock tires in 4-WD." Horn sells a set of wheels for $1,400. Spacers are available for older (1980's and before) models with solid rear axles. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dave's Machine Shop, P.O. Box 223, Oak Bluff, Man., Canada R0G 1N0 (ph 204 736-2908)

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