Making custom tires and wheels for 1:18 aircraft

VMF115 · Post by **VMF115** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 7:47 pm

Any ideas on how it to get, or make beefed up landing gear wheels for the Bbi corsair?

V2 MAN · Post by **V2 MAN** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 8:27 pm

just a thought here. Might have to try taking some tires of a toy car or truck. Might just have to find one just the right size

hope it helps

VMF115 · Post by **VMF115** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 8:57 pm

V2 MAN wrote:just a thought here. Might have to try taking some tires of a toy car or truck. Might just have to find one just the right size hope it helps

thansk but Sabrefan has a great idea

Sabrefan wrote:VMF115 I agree with you that the tires are kind of narrow. I wanted to tell you how I fixed that problem with my BBI Corsair. A friend of mine had a 21st Century Avenger. His kids really did a number on it, so he gave it to me. I really love my BBI Marines Dream Corsair, but I find the tires to be to skinny. Well I took the wheels and tires off of the Avenger, painted the hubs silver and mounted them on my BBI Corsair. It took a little work, but it looks great. The Avenger tires are about the same height as the Corsairs stock tires, but they are fatter. I used Testors metallic silver for the hubs, and it was a perfect match for the BBI silver.

V2 MAN · Post by **V2 MAN** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 9:06 am

That is a great idea never thought of that

Spudkopf · Post by **Spudkopf** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:52 am

G'day VMF115

In my neck of the woods spare Avenger wheels or any spare aircraft wheels for that matter would next to impossible to track down in my neck of the woods so here are some suggestions.

What I have found that works quite well is to get some compressed fibre washers the type used for taps (faucets) which down here are usually red coloured.

I build up the tire by laminating these together to the desired thickness using Super (Crazy) Glue to bond them together, the lamination even causes a light tread pattern to be formed, sharp edges if needed can be filed or sanded smooth, the big trick is finding washers with an appropriate sized hole diameter that matches the existing hub.

Here is how it looked on my MD tail wheel, in real life the tail wheels for the Corsair were usually made of solid rubber as pneumatic tires have a tendency to bounce which is not desired trait on carrier based tail dragger.

Also like the suggestion above look at the toy car isle of your local store but I suggest that some of the motorcycle tires may be more suitable.

Studly · Post by **Studly** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 4:02 pm

Hey Spud nice little conversion you have done there Mate thanks for the tip i never thought about using washers

Jay · Post by **Jay** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:23 pm

Hey Spud, nice work. That actually looks quite good ie size and fit. Did you build/replace the actual rear under carriage as well? My MD has a single arm strut dragging the tail wheel.

Spudkopf · Post by **Spudkopf** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:31 pm

Studly wrote:Hey Spud nice little conversion you have done there Mate thanks for the tip I never thought about using washers

G'day Studly

The good things about using the washers are that they are consistent in size and you just laminate however many you need to get your desired thickness and best of its a relatively cheap method, which with my limited hobby budget (no existent would be a more apt description) is always a desirable trait.

Jay wrote:Hey Spud, nice work. That actually looks quite good ie size and fit. Did you build/replace the actual rear under carriage as well? My MD has a single arm strut dragging the tail wheel.

G'day Jay

I built an entirely new tail wheel brace (strut) as I could find no evidence of the single arm version BBI chose to use. Here is a link to my original posting about the conversion and the compromises I had to make.

viewtopic.php?t=6099

All in all a brace made from aluminium sheet would have been a better idea but after spending so much effort on the plastic card one I decided to just live with it, If you are interested I may still have the flat pattern I drew up for the brace (I think this is on my work PC) and I could send it to you so you can make your own.

Sabrefan · Post by **Sabrefan** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 9:18 pm

Nice work Spud, really gives that whole tailwheel assembly a nice look.