White Wall tire advice

[HoopsAurora]

Seen a number of posts on here and other places regarding white walls. I’m working on some wide white walls for a Tamiya ‘66 Beetle and I used a circle template which was a great trick I came across.  The rings came out just about perfect until I accidentally touched one and the rings came was destroyed.  I tried both Tamiya white primer as well as some rustoleum white paint that I had to see if one worked better.  The paint had been drying for several hours and yet it still came off.  Is there something I should have done?  I guess two plus hours isn’t enough time to dry?  Thoughts or advice?

[Ace-Garageguy]

Lacquers and enamels will often never dry on flexible model car tires.

Try acrylic water-based paint.

Rattlecan interior dye for real cars will work on most flexible model tires too.

I use a compass with a circle-cutter blade on frisket film to make the masks.

I've also used a circle cutter on white decal film with varying degrees of success.

     

Edited Sunday at 01:33 AM by Ace-Garageguy

[stitchdup]

you need to swap the tyres if you want whitewalls painted on the tamiya bugs. the tryes continue to flex a little with the heat and crumbles away from the tyre eventually. the tyres from the polar lights snappers fir the tamiya tyres with a little inner edge trimming and the tamiya white primer will stick to them once you remove the shine. some of the revell kits whitewall decals might be a better route than paint on the tamiya tyres. if you have a revell 40 the tyres from it might fit the tamiya wheels too as the whole 1/24 and 1/25 size/scale difference could work in your favour

[Mike 1017]

13 hours ago, HoopsAurora said:

Seen a number of posts on here and other places regarding white walls. I’m working on some wide white walls for a Tamiya ‘66 Beetle and I used a circle template which was a great trick I came across.  The rings came out just about perfect until I accidentally touched one and the rings came was destroyed.  I tried both Tamiya white primer as well as some rustoleum white paint that I had to see if one worked better.  The paint had been drying for several hours and yet it still came off.  Is there something I should have done?  I guess two plus hours isn’t enough time to dry?  Thoughts or advice?

Try using acrylics. Alot of Forum Members say this is the only way to go. Enamels will not dry on tires. I suspect that when you touched the tire and it was still wet the culprit was Enamel.

Good Luck

[StevenGuthmiller]

Yes, acrylic is the way to go.

In most cases, I just buy aftermarket white wall tires.

It's a lot easier and I prefer to focus my attention on other aspects of the model rather than things that I consider "busy work" such as wiring distributors and painting tires, when there are fantastic options available that are generally better and will save me a bunch of work.

But on occasion, I have painted my own tires with water based acrylic.

 

These red lines on my '68 Coronet as an example.

 

 

 

 

 

Steve 

Edited Sunday at 05:06 PM by StevenGuthmiller

[Bills72sj]

I have used my mini-lathe and chucked up the tire and set it spinning. Then I place two #11 hobby blade in the tool post. I then sneak into the tire and cut perfect perfect parallel grooves. I change tool and clear out a groove for paint to reside in. With the lathe set up, you can do all 4 tires with EXACTLY the same groove width and diameter. I used decanted white enamel paint and fill in the grooves. Acetone is used to clean up the sloppy paint application outside of the grooves. I taught myself this as a solution for getting larger diameter tires to look appropriate on my "Big Girls" project.