Car tires are very critical and important parts of your RC car models. Having a strong and powerful engine, a sturdy chassis and rugged body is not enough to build race winning RC car. Though it may seem that tires only a part and parcel of the package, those who take them for granted may be doing a big mistake. Even if you have done everything perfect in buying or building a high-class RC car racing model, the choice of tires may make or break your performance on the race track. The tires will decide that how well your RC car is going to hold on to the track when it is running at top speeds. This will decide if your car skids on the surface or is firm even while taking turns. What is even more important that each type of race track has different requirements of tires. What works on a flat cemented road can completely be a failure on a dirt track and vice versa. So here is all you ever wanted to know about the tires available for RC cars.
RC racing car tires are either available separately or are available pre-attached with the wheels. Generally, different car brands manufacture their own tires which may sometime be wearable by the models of those brands only. All the tires come in some specific size specifications and are designed for specific type or size of vehicle such as different sizes of RC cars and RC trucks. Even for a given model and a given size, there can be numerous types of tires that are available varying in tread depth, tread design and the type of material. They again may be suited to different preferences, type of use and the type of terrain.
Drift Tire
The first type of tires is drift tires. They are specially designed for the purpose of drift racing. They have different tread designs that are mostly planar and suited for drift driving. One example of car that uses drift tires RTR type Sprint 2 Drift model. The material that is mostly used in RC car drift tires rubber, also including a special type of resin compound. This composition is used to ensure that the drifting type RC car tires don’t do any damage to the RC tracks as a lot of friction is generated between the tire surface and the track. The tires may preferably be mounted on special wheels i.e. touring car wheels.
Bowtie Tire
The bowtie type of tires are generally long lasting and slow wearing tires that are specifically designed to survive hard RC tracks. They use special material that is quite firm and doesn’t wear down easily even on very hard and destructive tracks.
Ribbed Tire
The ribbed tires are ideally for use on front wheels of the RC racing car and truck models. An example of such a vehicle using ribbed tires is the HPI’s Firestorm 10T. They are considered to be better in quality than the pin type tires as they are able to provide better grip on the surface.
All Terrain Tire
These are the multipurpose type tires that can be used to race RC cars on multiple terrains. Their special design and special material composition make them capable of doing this. These tires can be mounted on both real as well as front wheels. You may have seen such multipurpose tires on models such as the MGT 4.60 SE by Team Associated and Jato 1/10 scaled stadium class truck by Traxxas.
Street Tire
The street tire specialized type of tires that are specifically designed for top performance while racing on hard surfaces like roads and pavements make of materials like asphalt or concrete. An example of street tires is Anaconda 2.8″. This brand of street tires is usually fitted on the wheels of Traxxas Jato 3.3 and the Traxxas’ Nitro Rustler.
How to change RC Tire?
Changing tires of RC car models may be a tricky task sometimes. You should be aware of the standard way of changing RC car tires to avoid any trouble. Firstly you have to use the 4-way wrench for removing the factory nuts that are holding the tires in place with the RC car model. Take out the old tires from the wheels and mount the new tires in place of them. Each tire is meant to be put at a specific place, for example, wider tires are for rear wheels and slimmer tires are for front wheels. In some case, even the left and right tires may be different. After placing the tires on the wheels and positioned them properly, secure the tires with the wheels by using glue so that the tires do not slip. Once the tires are put in place, mount the wheel back on the axel and tighten back the nuts to an optimum extent.