Crooznfbroozn

"The ultimate off-road wheel". With useless city tires.. Lol.

To me the 18XL is a 'cruiser' type wheel; solid, immovable, boring - perfect if you just need to go from A to B with as little fuss as possible. 16X is zippier, manoeuvrable, feisty. As far as build goes, my 16X has done some pretty bad tumbles and what breaks for me so far are: the mudflap, the body/shell connectors (which can be taken out and replaced). The connectors have a sharp side to them that pokes into the battery, so I cut off the sharp corner and put some padding in between. (the padding is done factory standard but it still pokes too much) (btw, opening the thing up and servicing is a breeze compared to my inmotion wheels - the price you pay for water proofing?) Given the shell has quite a bit of give as its soft plastic, it doesnt crack; downside is you can push the body against the tire doing one legged riding etc. (to me, still a positive all in all) And water proofing, well, there is sealing put in to make things better; but the shell is screwed against the body without any overlapping materials to stop ingress. You can peer through the cracks between the body/shell easily. I offset this with the NZ cover + sealing tape (in winter only). Biggest problem that is left is the handle, the way it goes into the body creates wells where water will naturally collect/drip into. I had a funny lift sensor for a few days after water got in - letting everything dry got it to work again. All in all, it is a design flaw that needs to be factored in and mitigated. I wouldn't trust it in heavy rain, but not worried when it starts drizzling either. (been driving in heavy snow etc) For my purposes, the 16X is a great wheel!

How did you make those?

Yeah I get you on the knees part Would love to give suspension a try, who knows, might open up a brave new world for me. But I like my upward propulsion you get on a "stiff" wheel lol

I do offroad trail beyond what chooch does on a ks16x. One thing to keep in mind is ruggedness of the wheel. Ive smashed mine more than once. I havent tried a suspension wheel but Id be nervous to smash the s18 into a tree with all those delicate bits exposed. Fyi, the advertised distance of the s18 is lower than that of the ks16x. Depending on the weather and the slowdown of the wheel at lower battery Id take 40-60km with a pinch of salt.

To me, pads are a must. I only do off-road riding. I never tried the "premade" pads however, mine are down low just above my feet. Helps only slightly in de/accelerating but it keeps me on the wheel when jumping/bumping/downhill without being locked into the wheel (spikes). Agility is barely affected (in a pinch I can go bow legged and circumvent the pads)

Quick update; I had initially changed my tire from the stock to the one in the very first post of this thread. I go offroading for fun on MTB trails, so a better grip in a bit of mud would really help. I've now switched back to the original stock tire. Conclusions: * The wheel goes from agile to really sluggish in the turns, awkward turning, needs a lot of body involvement.. effectively takes the 'joy' out of the wheel for me. On the stock tire I can hang into the wheel to turn and feel like im floating... smooth as silk. The knobby tire just wants to fall over. * Tires that are not the original 16x3 make the wheel to low to the ground for me. (exacerbated by the fact knobby tires need you to turn a lot harder) Constantly hitting the floor. * Quality of initial tire -> after not that many rides with it, the tire is starting to show tears.. probably not a good sign. Also getting consistent push to fall over to one side which I think is the tire not being even. (oh, and the tire was a *nightmare* to put on vs stock tire) * Insane grip. Really crazy. However, when things get too wet and muddy I start worrying more about the electronics.. so you can't go too crazy. I tried it on ice and in snow - tons and tons of fun. * Just going on normal roads felt dangerous and seriously tiresome. Turns are terrible, and you cant just 'stand and chill' on your wheel.. needs constant adjustment to stay up In short - great for snow and ice. Horrid for having fun on trails. I've looked around for alternatives, can't see anything dependable out there - so my conclusion (unless someone can prove differently). A 16" wheel is not made for knobby tires.

Curiouuuuusssss

Lowering to 24psi again improved things a lot. Bit of a catch 22 as I'd hoped to do some decent jumping on this and I'm coming from 35 psi on the original tire

Ive always stood a bit "sideways" (one foot more forward than the other) on the KS16X, always attributed it to snowboarder habits (even though I only do it on this wheel). However changing to a knobby tire I notice the wheel really does want to fall to the left and it's taking a lot out of my right leg to consistently push the wheel back to center. (I'm assuming on the stock wheel it is less pronounced so I instinctively started to stand a bit uneven to counter the push sideways) I've read of people balancing the wheel by adjusting the pedals, is that a thing as well on a KS16X? Anyone have any experience with this?

Yup, 16X as well. Painful lol.

Oh right. I'm clumsy so when I used a metal tire lever I managed to bend my rim with it.

Any chance for a pic of the tools you used ? 😬

It won't be totally different, but it is a lot better. Logically because the knobbies get to dig into the soil.

It definitely bites better in off road surfaces. You may have noticed there are two directions you can put the wheel on. I put it on "hard" (the 'flat' side of the center knobbies in the direction forward). But as with yourself the experience was jarring at first. Wheel just "wants to fall" sideways. What had made this a lot easier was lowering tube pressure from 35psi to 30psi. The way I sense it, the wheel is very sensitive to normal paved road and wants to adjust (if the road is angled down from left to right,the wheel wants to hang left). What I found interesting however, is that the wheel acts differently now where the position of my feet dictate the angle of the wheel left/right but my upper body dictates the direction the wheel wants to turn. On the stock tire this was much more harmonious. On the other hand, in off road soil the grip is insane. I feel like I could crawl sideways up muddy walls now.