Drying Waterlogged Tyres
Radio control car tyres usually have foams inside them, they are also superglued to the wheel, but they have holes on the inside of the wheel to allow the tyres to compress. When running in wet conditions dirt and water can get inside the tyre, soaking the foam, resulting in slowing the vehicle, and making the wheels out of balance.
Off-road racers routinely cut holes in the treads of the tyres, this allows the water a way out, as the vehicle moves, the centrifugal force makes the water leave the inside of the tyre via the holes in the tread.
Example Cut in Tyre
It’s easy to make these, you can do them neatly, with say a leather punch, but you need to do that before you glue the tyres on. If they are already glued on, you can make a small slit, say 6-8mm long in the tread. You can put several of these all the way around, perhaps 8 of them. You can use a small pair of scissors or a knife, be careful not to cut the foam below though.
When you run the vehicle, the water should be expelled as you are running, it’s a good idea to finish off the run with a quick blast with all wheels off the ground to get the maximum out.
If you want to wash the wheels, you can, and yes, the foam will fill up with water.
You can expell this by mounting an old axle in a cordless drill, put a pin in it, put the hex on, and bolt the wheel down onto the axle. Then, and this is very important indeed, put the wheel horizontally into a bucket, or the bath tub, and power up the drill, you’ll see an amazing amount of (usually dirty) water hitting the sides of the bucket very quickly indeed.
When you’ve finished put them somewhere warm to try and dry them out some more, they actually have a chance of drying now there is some way of the moisture getting out.
Written by simon.
HPI E-Savage Waterproofing
Following a very wet bashing day the other day, and cleaning it off with the garden hose I thought I should waterproof it a bit.
Posted a video showing what I did.
