Has anyone had any issues with painting the vinyl tyres in the Trumpeter Centauro (or any other similar Trumpy wheeled beast), or any subsequent peeling off or reactions with the vinyl?

As an alternative, which aftermarket resin wheels are best/most accurate?

Does anyone have Echelon's set of Somalia/UN decals (I think they did them once)?

Michael, I have not tried to paint vinyl tires from Trumpeter, honestly the ones in my M1117 Guardian just didn't look good enough to me, so I bought replacements from DEF. I think DEF make resin wheels for the Centauro, but I'm not qualified to say if they are more accurate than the kit.

I have several sets of wheels for different vehicles from DEF, and they all seem well cast and nicely sculpted.

Hi,
I've completed a Centauro few days ago.
I've utilized the tyres of the kit.
At first I had problems because they were unstable and moved from their position on the wheel, but I streghtened them inserting a ring of card strip 3 mm wide and using some cyanoacrilate from inside to glue them to the metallic part of the wheel.
The vinyl caps inside the wheels created some unstability too. I preferred to remove the caps and glue each wheel to the collar of its pin (I can't find exact engineer terms).
About their color, I've utilized their natural color as a base, after some sanding of the flashes, and I've patiently dirtened them with a mix of brownish thinned paint and dust, simulating mud and dust, that were immediately cleaned with a cloth on the parts supposed abraded by the contact with the road.

This sounds interesting. Do you have any photos of what you have done?

This is a recently finished LAV-150, using the vinyl wheels.

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/238189&page=1

The wheels were not painted, only weathered. First I removed any sims and mold markings, sanded them with 800 sandpaper and gave them a very dark brown wash with oil paints.

Then, using a brush, I applied pigments and rubbed them off with my finger, so that they stay only in the inner parts of the tread.

Finally I airbrushed some dry mad vallejo color, to simulate the dust around the rims.

I intend to follow the same procedure for my in progrees centauro. Will post pics as soon as I have completed it.

I give my tires a heavy MMA engine gray wash and let them sit. As long as i do not overflex them when installing them i do not have any peeling. I may do an oil wash and pastels depending on the base terrain.

http://armorama.com/forums/170218#1429047

This is mine I built a couple years back. Depends on how you want to paint them though. I lightly weathered mine and they turned out "okay".

The DEF comes in resin with the weighted bulge. No problem with the rubber tires and they are molded well.

I never paint rubber/vynil tires. I only weather them with pigments after a thorough sanding of the surfaces.

Olivier

I have not needed to paint rubber tires,on a Stryker I just weather with washes and pigments.

I recently painted the Fennek wheels with Tamiya XF-85 Rubber Black. No problems so far.