Jump to content
Model Cars Magazine Forum

Tires, and why are they "rubber", anyway?


Recommended Posts

The recent threads on tire melt got me thinking... There's been a lot of changes in what kit makers gave us for tires over the years, some good, some awful....  My Dad regaled me with stories of plain hard plastic wheels, cast metal, and even wood (I think he was pulling my leg there)...  I personally recall all kinds of tires over the years, hard vinyl Palmer tires that bruised your fingers getting them onto the wheels, Monogram hard plastic tires with flat spots, wrinkle wall slicks that only looked right on one side, Johan double name tires, and AMT's egregiously awful two piece tires from the late seventies.... Some of my favorites were the venerable Firestone Supremes and MPC's great G series. Unfortunately, those have an unpredictable habit of shrinking and hardening as they age. Lindberg's issue of Armstrong tires in the exAMT 1934 Ford pickup are an odd duck, but work well for some builds. Revell's tires, with a few exceptions, gave me fits. They were difficult to mount and never seemed to fit together well, and some of their kits still cleave to these things... Their recent offerings have been better, except that they rarely if ever have sidewall details. Round 2's pad printed slicks and other tires have been a welcome respite from the same old stuff. Tamiya tires, as well as Heller, have a habit of splitting in two. I haven't had this issue with Hasegawa tires. Moebius tires are fabulous, little gems all their own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I seem to recall the first time I saw 'rubber' tires in a kit in the 60s, I was thrilled :) Wow, I didn't have to glue the tire halves together and paint the tires :) Lettering the sidewalls was a little tricky but I managed. And you could flex a rubber tire over a solid wheel without having to glue it in place :) 

Over the years, tires started to melt, in some cases. I have a few that have melted but only those I kept in a box. The tires on my finished models are good...where is that horseshoe? :) I do have a couple of models that I got out of collections where the tire and wheel have melted together but when I looked at them, each one had a layer of glue on it, so perhaps the glue is what causes the tire and wheel to melt together :( 

When I get an old model now, I take the wheel and tire and drop them in the Super Clean. That seems to work very well. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...