Duratrax Deep Woods CR Tire Review
For several years the crew over at Duratrax have been making aftermarket tires that are both affordable and high performance. For 2016 they have expanded their line-up to include tires for the rock crawling and trail driving crowd. Recently we got a chance to give their new Deep Woods CR tires a spin to see how they worked. Do they work for crawling tires? How about on other surfaces? How are the stock foams? Should you cut the check for a set? Keep reading to find out…
From: Duratrax
Direct Link: Deep Woods CR
Review By: Cubby
Pictures By: Tim Mohr
Driving By: Nick Lebbing
Specs:
Size: 2.2″
Tire Compound: Duratrax C3
Pre-Mounted: Yes
Wheel Hex Size: 12mm
Beadlock Design: No
Price: $19 per pair just tires, $27-$29 pre-mounted
Primary Competition: There are a lot of high quality 2.2″ crawling tires on the market from brands like Pro-Line, Pit Bull, RC4WD, etc.
Build Quality: We didn’t find an quality issues with the Deep Woods pre-mounts. The wheels were strong and didn’t have any excessive flash, the tires didn’t have any quality issues, even the glue on the pre-mounts was well done and did not break loose.
Ease of Use: We reviewed a pair of pre-mounted sets and it just doesn’t get any faster or easier to upgrade your truck than to bolt a set of these on. The Deep Woods pre-mounts come with an industry standard 12mm hex and bolted right up without issue. You are looking at 5 minutes max to remove your stockers and bolt on the Duratrax upgrade wheels/tires.
Traction/Grip: You do know that grip and traction are two different things right? Grip is the adhesion you get on hard surfaces, while traction is what you get in loose surfaces where the lugs can actually dig in. The Duratrax Deep Woods impressed us on every surface we drove them on. Whether it was rocks, dirt, wood, or on metal grating, the Deep Weeds got the job done. And not just sorta well, they performed like true high-end tires. On rocks their ultra-soft compound did an excellent job of finding grip, while their soft inserts did a good job of folding over to conform to sharp edges. The Deep Woods are also a very tall tire for a 2.2, definitely XL sized, which helped a lot in ultra technical sections. On loose dirt, the ultra-soft compound also helped, while the scale inspired tread layout dug right in to find traction. The Deep Woods may be an affordable tire, but it performs as well as its “high-end” competition.
Misc Notes:
Yes, the Deep Woods are tall for a 2.2. In most applications this is a huge plus, but if your rig runs fenders and you’ve had problems with other tires rubbing, the Deep Woods might be a tight fit.
The stock foams are not of the memory type but they worked really well. They are firm enough to keep your truck from smashing the tires flat while sitting still, but soft enough to conform to the terrain while being driven.
Did we mention they are molded from a crazy soft compound? Duratrax calls it their C3 compound, all we know is they are arguably the softest compound we’ve ever felt. This is a great thing when crawling, and while normally a too soft compound comes back to haunt you by pizza cutting too much or wearing too quickly, those aren’t really issues encountered when used for crawling or trail driving.
The wheels that came with the tires held up well. Their 12mm hex didn’t strip when being bound up in tight sections and they looked cool. We will note that they have a different offset than some of the other wheels on the market, not much, but a little, so they may make your truck a bit wider than the wheel/tire combo that you currently use.
All our testers liked the look of the tread design and most liked the white lettering on the sidewalls as well. Overall, our testers really liked how they looked.
Final Verdict: We were very impressed by every aspect of the Duratrax 2.2″ Deep Woods CR pre-mounts. The Deep Woods looked tough and proved to be high performance tires on a variety of surfaces. Yes, we can highly recommend them to you.
