What material are tires made from?

[bluecoast]

Does anybody know what material Tamiya tires are made from generally?

I am looking for a more scientific answer than "synthetic rubber."

Thanks.

[DJTheo]

I think the material also changed through the years, aaahhh that smell of a vintage NIB kit due to the tires [8D], brings back so many memories []...

[Oldpoopie]

quote:aaahhh that smell of a vintage NIB kit due to the tires , brings back so many memories ...

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You aint kidding!

[bluecoast]

SO...

anybody have any ideas?

[netsmithUK]

Personnally I don't think you are going to get an answer to this, in terms of a chemical break down. Tamiya don't list the details anywhere and working it out requires specialist equipment and analysis skills.

It'll be a guarded secret like Kentucky Fried Chicken seaoning or Coke.

Chris

[WillyChang]

Not specifically Tamiya (due, as Chris said) but a month or 2 ago the US magazine RC CAR had a feature about a smaller RC tyre company and documented how exactly tyres are made.

[ideal2k]

If you did plan to have reproductions made, I would check with Wings'N'Wheels hobbystore in Tiverton, they've made the Ballistic buggy series of tyres for a number of years, so they would know what kind of material to use.

They would probably know how to go about having reproductions made, as their own series originated as a.. uhm..

Let's just say the tyres were very similar to the most competitive Schumacher tyres a few years back... [8D]

[bluecoast]

okay, well this is all out of the bag I guess

What I was looking for is buna, nitrile, polybutyrate, butyl, etc.

Anyone who has worked around any of these would probably be able to identify the material by smell.

I am a professional engineer... one of my friends from university is as well and works at a rubber molding factory. I sent him some worn scorcher tires and he's taking care of me in terms of measuring the durometer and figuring out the material.

My first iteration was going to be a very simple three-piece mold from shore 40 silicone (about the same hardness as the tires themselves) taken directly off the tires... I have the silicone; have figured out the best way to mold the inside profile (this is a challenge to do correctly)... just waiting to make an aluminum insert which is part of my plan to hold all the pieces together. And I need a vacuum pump to degas the silicone.

What I'm going to try first is just colouring some silicone with carbon black and making the tires with that. I am hoping with experimentation they will look and behave like the originals even though they're made from silicone (which the originals probably aren't). Probably any non-foam tire could be made for $10 a tire in one-off quantities this way.

Anyway, I have been looking for advice etc. online for a long time... I know about Alex Jung (auctions! on ebay) selling repro smoothees.. I HAVEN'T got in touch with him.

Just hoping somebody would help with advice etc; I would like to contribute something to the awesome Tamiya repro community.

Cheers,

Andrew

[jhellman(2)]

Hi,

have you given a though using some very soft old used racing tyres, for example from go-carts or track racing cars? Melt them and get some real rubber compound. Better to get the softest compound tyres you can find, otherwise they might be too slippery for RC.

After that you still need to get the vacuum and heat in order to get the vulcanisation to happen.

My brother knows a person who turned an kitchen owen into rubber vulcanization owen to recoat go-cart tyres. It should not be a too hard once you have a proper molding cask. I have given some thought to it myself too, but have lacked the time and equipment to make a proper molding cask.

I'm very interested to hear more about your experiments, please keep us updated on your findings.

best regards,

Juha

[bluecoast]

Juha,

well I thought you couldn't melt rubber once it was vulcanized (that being the idea of vulcanization) but I could be wrong. I DID think of getting some retreading compound (for recapping truck tires) and using it, vlucanizing it in an oven, but I think I would need an aluminum mold at least (which would have to be drawn and cnc machined rather than just 'taken' off a tire like the silicone mold)

Andrew

[WillyChang]

Ya, so cannot re-vulcanise rubber but you can chop up old rubber to re-use the rubber (dust?) as a filler in your new compound.

Vulcanising is like cooking an egg; can't remelt an omelette. []