Adding water / methanol to front tires for traction, would it work?

Patriot

Patriot

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I had this thought about how to gain more traction while climbing steep inclines. I have seen several hill climbs that our shorter wheel based TJ's couldn't climb where the LJ would. In those climbs, the front wheels begin to loose traction because most of the weight has shifted to the rear. My thought is to add water/methanol to the front tires to help put more weight at the wheel and increase the friction on the front tires. On the tractors we run on the farm, we fill about 2/3rs full of water/methanol to help increase traction while pulling implements through the field. Has anyone tried this? What are your thoughts?
 
You've still got to push that additional weight up the hill. I wonder what the fluid would do at speed...
 
Patriot said:
I had this thought about how to gain more traction while climbing steep inclines. I have seen several hill climbs that our shorter wheel based TJ's couldn't climb where the LJ would. In those climbs, the front wheels begin to loose traction because most of the weight has shifted to the rear. My thought is to add water/methanol to the front tires to help put more weight at the wheel and increase the friction on the front tires. On the tractors we run on the farm, we fill about 2/3rs full of water/methanol to help increase traction while pulling implements through the field. Has anyone tried this? What are your thoughts?
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It would very much help. Lots of competition rock crawlers run heavy shot in their tires to the tune of about 300 lbs. per front tire.
 
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Relocate the spare? :D
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I wouldn't want to daily driver a TJ with that weight in the front tires, but for competition, whatever works works.
 
It seems to work great until it doesn't. Some guys swore by it back in the early comp days, and some still run it, but we found that, while it was great to have the extra weight up there for smooth steep climbs, it started working against us when we needed the tires to lift that extra weight straight up a vertical ledge. And so many climbs, especially the tougher ones, involve steps. At some point it just started to feel like carrying around hundreds of pounds of extra weight after trying to build a rig as light as possible. For steep climbs, winching the nose down helped without the weight penalty. And then there is the extra strain on the axles and u-joints, etc.
 
Have you tried using your winch to draw the front axle in? That prevents the front suspension from unloading and pushing the front away from the obstacle and rolling end over end down the hill.
 
Years ago I had a similar problem with my '98 XJ when climbing very steep hill climbs in Moab; the front end would unload due to lift and the heavy spare tire. My solution was to move the spare tire inside the cargo area above the rear axle and I had previously installed a Rubicon Express trac bar strengthening brace so I used it as a mounting point for a restraining strap to connect with the axle tube to control the unloading. The restraining strap does not impact droop and stuffing of the tire when flexing out.
 
Motocross riders use a locking mechanism on the front fork that compresses it a few inches and keeps it from extending until the front tire hits the ground after the race start. It's called a "hole shot devise" and transfers maximum traction to the rear wheel while keeping wheelie-ing to a minimum. Sounds like a similar principle to winching down the front axle that Goatman mentioned.
 
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