This is just an idea... When you buy a car, the wheels have tires mounted on. You may wish to change them because there not molded on... Now, I may be laz.., but why not have separate tires on tank kits? Trumpeter have a Challenger that is supplied with wheels and separate tires. It would make painting a lot easier and give a better result. I would like oppinions and can take a certain amount of verbal abuse...I am new here, at this site and I'm really enjoying the fact that I may not be alone (sometimes, my wife thinks that I'm nuts), no comment.
Thanks for reading this and hope to get some feedback
Claude aka diamonds088

Pllllllllllllleeeeeeaaaaaaassssssse,
Stop reading and gimme some input. Have pitty on the newie...
D

Academy tried this with the Merkava and M60 series tank kits. It wasn't really successful. Most car wheels sandwich the tire from front and back. A tanks rubber road wheel portion is molded onto the sheel and are basically one piece.

UM just started doing it with the 1/72 scale T-34 series kits. I haven't started building it yet so I don't know how it'll look.

BTW welcome to the site.

Diamond, welcome aboard. As Sabot stated, Aademy has tried that and it didn't go too well. Also of note, when tanks are painted, everything gets painted, even the rubber portion of the roadwheel. About the only part of it that doesnt get paint on it is the actual portion that makes contact with the track. It isnt uncommon to see roadwheels with a heavy overspray on the rubber portion in motor pools. Just my .02 cents worth. "Q"

Well, Red 4, this is something I had noticed in the gallery but dindn't dare comment on. Now that you've cleared this, I may log out an catch some needed sleep. Thanks againguys, and keep on with this fantastic brotherhood (the big kids with serious toys...)
Claude

Claude:

A couple of reasons:

- Rubber/vinyl model tires never look like real tires. Invariably they are painted.

- If separate, they have to be attached somehow. If glued after painting, well, there's a good chance you'll have a glue smear. That means you'll want to paint after assembly, which kinda defeats the whole purpose . . .

- If they are attached by friction, like many car model tires, there is a good chance that the either the paint or tire will crack.

So, people are generally happy with what we have. Once you get a circle template or similar and spray them, it's not that big of a chore.

KL

You wish has been answered, well on one kit anyway. The soon to be released Tristar Pz IV D had seperate plastic tires for the roadwheels. They are also releasing a seperate set of running gear so all the DML, Academy and Tamyia kits can be upgraded as well!

My biggest point against seperate tires is that the real vehicles don't have seperate/removeable tires. They are molded in place. A seperate kit tire would inevitably have aseam as you can't cut the tooling to mould the parts reliably so that things are line-on-line. There has to be some looseness of fit to assemble them. That said, the gap is something you'd have to fill, so pre-painting is out. So why bother? :-)

I would also hate to see soft vinyl tires on any kit as past history has shown that the plastics usually used frequently release plasticiser over time "melting" the mating parts.

For soft skins having sepaerate rims and tires (all in styrene) is a reasonable idea, however, most companies do a reasonable job of the wheel/hub area and fall down on the tread pattern, which seperate styrene tire parts is unlkely to solve.

Now, as an added bonus to a really good wheeled vehicle kit, for a styrene manufacturer to include some resin tires with the right pattern would be a step up. Unfortunately, this is still something best left in the hands of the aftermarket folks.

Paul

I cannot comment on AFV tyres but I can on the softskin rubber tyres added to kits by some manufactures.

The early Tamiya LRDG kit had these and after a while the rubber cracked. The Tamiya Dragon Wagon tank recovery had them as well but these ones were nice. Trouble was it was hard to remove the mold seam without ruining the tyre. Italeri had them in their Opel Blitz and Mercedes 3000L kits but they did not look realistic.

I think solid resin rim and tyre is the way to go as long as they have the correct tyre size and tread pattern on them.

Cheers
Cliff

Claude, first off.....Welcome!!!

I just received my Tamiya M3A2 Half-Track and found that the tires (rubber/vinyl?) are separate from the rims. I think I'm going to like this, but will I have problems later? I hope not.

If you look at the pictures of the Paladin I took that were posted for me, you'll see the overspray on the roadwheels. This particular gun (B13) was painted with CARC this month (March 05)....so it's fresh.

The link is to the gallery's link is: https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/47278&page=1 ....sorry, but the boards are down at the moment and I can't give you just the pictures. I know that overspray is common with the modern AFVs, but I'm not sure that the previous generations were careful about overspray.

Mike

While I woud agree that seperate rubber tires might make the painting of the wheels/tires easier, I would also have to agree with the majority that it would probably create more problems than it would solve. I've asked for different ways to paint the wheels/tires on this site, I have found that it just takes a bit of time and patience to have a good looking wheel. It's one of those things there are no easy answers to.

Wow,
I don't know what to say... So much help in so little time. I have purchased a template (circles) and one of them was almost a
perfect fit.Now my wheels are painted and on the Tiger. Looks great, but would not have been possible without your help. Thanks all, hope I may return the favor one day Did I mentionned that the "job" included some coarse language the I can't print here...lol
Well folks, that all for now, ttfn,
Claude
NO PAIN, NO GAIN...