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Vinyl tyres, help me please


thepureness

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Hi everyone

 

I've moved from aircraft modelling to AFV kits. I've invested in a couple of kits which all have vinyl tyres. 

It seems to be a very common thing to provide these now instead of making injection plastic tyres, but what on earth do you do with them?

 

I've looked online and found horror stories about them melting the plastic of the main kit.

 

Can anyone throw me some tips

 

 

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It's true.  :mellow:

 

Check this out:

 

UMBATyreRot

 

That is not gloss varnish.....The wheels & tyres were painted and weathered the same way as everything else, dead flat.  Also the wheels were actually round when I fitted them.  The tyres were isolated from the rest of the model by a thick layer of paint, so the effect on the plastic is not pronounced, but it's pretty horrible (and it still sticks to whatever you stand it on, half a decade later).  :shutup:

 

There's one way to be sure about the tyres in your kits, but there's an element of (unavoidable) risk.....Put the tyres in a Ziploc with some sprue from the kit and leave them for a month, if they eat it, you know where you stand.  The tyres will be screwed but your kit will be OK and you would have needed replacements anyway.  :confused:

5 hours ago, thepureness said:

It seems to be a very common thing to provide these now instead of making injection plastic tyres, but what on earth do you do with them?

Honestly.....I don't trust any of them.  :fraidnot:

 

I replace them with resin parts, from Armory, Hauler, Modelltrans etc. etc. as a matter of course, instantly almost doubling the cost of each and every kit.....Consequently I really do hate them with a passion.  :chair:

 

PS - Which kits do you have, some are well known for this.....Unimodel are a major culprit (that's one of their kits above) their vinyl is notoriously corrosive, Dragon's vinyl also does it (& their DS-100 has other issues all of its own), ACE warn you to put a barrier between their vinyl and their plastic (I use several.....A bin-bag, the bin and finally, the back door!  :wicked: ), MicroMir's vinyl does it too (I'll be demonstrating this shortly, when I start their 1/48 BTR), the list goes on.  :rolleyes:

 

PPS - L&L Tyres are the future.....Check out the tyres from T-Model's new 1/72 Humvees:

 

TM7201H.jpg

 

 

 

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If there were a brand I might trust it would be Trumpeter, I've used their vinyl tracks countless times without hassle.....I painted a batch of Trumpeter and Dragon T-34s around a decade ago, all had vinyl (as opposed to DS-100) tracks.  The Trumpeter kits are fine but the  Dragon vinyl remains slightly sticky to this day, although it doesn't appear to have attacked the plastic (yet). 

 

FWIW

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