# Tjet Front Tires



## cagee (Apr 20, 2007)

I've been having trouble with my tjet tires splitting. Not only the skinny ones but also the medium ones on the new autoworld chassis. Is there anything I can do to keep them from splitting?


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## vaBcHRog (Feb 19, 2003)

How are they splitting? across the tire or with the tire?

Roger Corrie


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## dlw (Aug 17, 1999)

Did you get oil on the tires? The JL tires would literally turn to stone if they came in contact with oil........Haven't had any AW tires hardenn yet.


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## cagee (Apr 20, 2007)

They are splitting across the tire. As far as I know they didn't come in contact with oil. They don't seem to be all that hard they are still pretty soft. Ain't had any problems with the wide tires just the other two.


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## clausheupel (Jan 27, 2005)

*AW front tires splitting*

Hi folks,

I already noticed the splitting front tires on my AW cars some time ago and was wondering WHY they do this. A friend of mine (who´s into chemistry) told me it it must be the new tire material (he said it´s some kind of PVC), that has a tendency to split.

Although my cars´ tires never seen any oil they´re ALL splitting! 

BTW: I didn´t have any success trying to cure them with CA-superglue (which worked fine on the older, narrow JL T-Jet rubber fronts). Bummer...!!! 

Here are pics of 2 cars randomly drawn from my trackside showing that effect (already tried to reglue the Bronco´s tire...):



















Errr, does anybody have an idea of what to use as replacement tires for those AW T-Jets as well as the X-tractions???

Greetings from Germany,

Claus


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## WesJY (Mar 4, 2004)

clausheupel said:


> Hi folks,
> 
> I already noticed the splitting front tires on my AW cars some time ago and was wondering WHY they do this. A friend of mine (who´s into chemistry) told me it it must be the new tire material (he said it´s some kind of PVC), that has a tendency to split.
> 
> ...


for afx/x-traction use O-ring rubber tires and for tjet i have no idea. anyone?

Wes


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## dlw (Aug 17, 1999)

That's crazy how those tires are splitting........None of my tires have split yet, but what I do is when I'm not running a particular car, it sits in the tacklebox without its tires to keep 'em from stretching. It keeps them fitting tight when I run a car. 

This might sound silly, but could it be that because of the PVC content in the tires, that they lack elasticity to avoid cracking caused by being on the rim constantly?


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## cagee (Apr 20, 2007)

Thats what mine look like also. I looked on ebay for some silicone for the fronts. There is a seller named franktheracer he has some skinny silicone tires but they look a little extra wide I wonder if they will work in place of the medium tires. Anybody know?


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## micyou03 (Apr 8, 2003)

I'll have to check mine. I've not noticed anything like this as of yet.


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## tjd241 (Jan 25, 2004)

*just my .02*

These are WAY too new to be splitting like this. This kinda stuff drives me crazy. No need for it. nd


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## Bill Hall (Jan 6, 2007)

Cagee, Frank is a super tire distributor. A good guy and a very durable tire.

Only drawback is if you happen to get an irregular one they are next to immpossible to true out. They wear like iron and are a great value. Put 'em on and forget about it save for the occassional scuff or cleaning to remove foreign objects. I got lots of them throughout my collection. They are just a little loud for my delicate sensibilities and have a rather sharp sidewall edge. Picky fart aint I? LOL

They'll be a bit small width wise, as would the relative T-jet tire from PVT. A slight profile drop would be evident as well. 

Personally, after 1 lap, I took one look at those clunker AW tires and tossed them all...and not into the parts bins either!....straight to the trash! In lieu of a direct replacement or trading junk tires for soon to be junk tires , if I had too, I'd just make up a batch fronts from PVT's Tuff Ones rear tires. Which is 'zactly what I did!

I use a sharp cutical scissor to trim the inside sidewall of the tire to just over width. Then sand the trimmed inside sidewall for fit and pretty and then roll the edge a little as well. There should be enough profile meat. A little sanding might be required to get the height similar to those aleady crumbling stockers. The PVT rear equivalent is a direct fit. Just roll the sharp inside edge, scuff them, then smoosh'em on and go. One would imagine that something like this could be done to Xtracs using PVT AFX replacements as well, but I havent had to as yet.

Thanx to guys like TJD241, Swamper Gene, and Roger Corrie, I've become enamored with PVT's for most of my slip on needs. Dont got exactly what you need? Easy enough to grind out the right size! Be done with it and move on to the next car. It aint rocket science and it really doesnt take a whole lot of time to get rollin' once ya get the hang of it. :thumbsup:


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## SwamperGene (Dec 1, 2003)

_Psst....Hey Bill....._


_We use PVT Tuffies on the XT rears, too. One size fits all. __:thumbsup: _

I have yet to see a race-worthy "Made for MT/XT" tire. .458 or whatever the supposed "stock" size is, that's just way too tall. Might as well be non-magnatractions.


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## Grandcheapskate (Jan 5, 2006)

Check out this thread for info on getting a boatload of AFX O-Rings for next to nothing:

http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?p=2201418#post2201418

Joe


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

The stock tires are generally good enough for display cases and shelf queens. For running on the track all you really need (if you are generous) is "n" complete sets of SuperTires or your favorite brand, with one of every size in every set, and preferably a unique color for each size. When I take a car out of the display case I peel off the show tires, slap on the silicones, and go to town. Reverse the process for putting the car back on display. Paying a couple of bucks for fancy tires for every car in your collection is somewhat wasteful, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of cars. For me, n = the number of lanes on the track.

Hey, if all those people like Bill who are filling all of our precious little landfills with discarded stock slot car tires would recycle them to more caring individuals then maybe we wouldn't be in such dire straights with our splitting tires. Wasn't there a big slot car tire fire somewhere in WA that burned for a real long time? Like ten or fifteen minutes? The black plume of smoke could be seen from space, as in the space on the other side of the water heater. An environmental disaster of miniature proportions.


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## Bill Hall (Jan 6, 2007)

*Where the rubber "meats" the road*



AfxToo said:


> ....snip
> 
> Hey, if all those people like Bill who are filling all of our precious little landfills with discarded stock slot car tires would recycle them to more caring individuals then maybe we wouldn't be in such dire straights with our splitting tires. Wasn't there a big slot car tire fire somewhere in WA that burned for a real long time? Like ten or fifteen minutes? The black plume of smoke could be seen from space, as in the space on the other side of the water heater. An environmental disaster of miniature proportions.


Touche'! Point taken "Too"! Hence forth I swear I WILL be more consciencious about my carbon credits and debits. 

Display tires? At what point do I have enough? Bags, boxes, or bushels? ...Or "D" all of the above! Please send yer shipping address and I'll send you a tire fire starter kit as they accumulate... free of charge naturally. Please specify particular needs, desired flame height and or smoke density required for your escape. I will try to accomodate. Thus asuaging my now guilty conscience you have egg-foo-yunged me with. In my defense: truthfully, had I known there was a dirth of petrified, lumpy, useless Flintstone tires, I would have proceeded in a more conservative manner. Have you alerted Al Gore or are you letting me off with a warning this time? If he does show up I'll shoot burning slot tires at him. I'm really not worried as one of my slot brothers will post my bail. I can then payback in junk display tires LOL! 

While I agree that the tire bill can get out of control toot sweet if your trying to shoe the whole fleet in one fell swoop; for the most part I'm of the school that you set up the car and leave it be. I used to swap tires all 'round from this too that. In theory, for most, this is quite practical. I did find that every so often, no matter how careful you are, you'll snag or tear a set of your favorite gummies. In addition many of my builds are close tolerance, tucked, tubbed, or perverted in such a manner that involves shucking the body before I can swap a tire. Granted tailored tires can be a nuisance. In that chronic tire "swaperama" is not always easy or applicable at my pad. Admittedly I do some swapping on occassion but it's more of the exception than the rule.

Shelf queens are not allowed around here so it better have a workable setup when plopped on the track. LOL. I run them all in somewhat of an orderly procession. Were I swapping tires from this to that it would cut seriously into my service time best spent on lubrication and cleaning. This plays into my theory of leaving the tire set up alone once it's done. If I tear a gummy, then I gotta replace the one I tore which means I gotta replace the backstock as well. So what's my time worth?... not much when I'm playin with little cars...but very valuable when I've gotta stop and order this or that from here or there. Such mundane administrative duties keep me from my play.

Rather than playing the chase, I've given up. Once or twice a year I just bite the bullet, purchase backstock in workable sizes. Saves freight and saves time. I use what I can for stock applications, grind what I need for my weirdo builds and otherwise muddle along. Sure it takes a little extra time to tailor tires but you cant argue with the results. Honestly I'm waaaaay to lazy to get up from the bench, spark up the pute and order tires let alone wait for delivery. From my lardass slottard perspective it's far easier to remain seated and humm up the required tires on demand and continue the build...often not even shifting in my chair...LOL. Wouldnt want to disturb the cat.  

Nearly three decades in the 1:1 grind taught me that the single most important improvement to any vehicle (beyond safety) is wheels and skins. It is no less applicable on 'lil cars. Perhaps more so in that a bogus tire can deslot one of your classis babies onto it's top...well there ya are...upside down and on fire!...all because two bucks worth of tire budget were held back. Now ya gotta polish out the roof cuz ya "Blues Brothered" your lid. Maybe worse heaven forbid! 

There for my soul mission in slotlife is to weed out wobblin rims and turd tires little by little. From the "killen'-ist" slotrocket, to the rattlin' "Vibes" if the rubber that meets the road is sub-par ya got bubkus. So I cut, grind, or burn anything that doesnt conform to the statutes and manners of proper handling! :devil:

Tongue in cheek cuz foots in mouth, ergo thumb's in b--- with all systems normal. :wave:


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## SplitPoster (May 16, 2006)

Burn or throw away crappy tires? Oh the shame of it all, when you could be making little scale tire barriers all around your track, using low grade "rubber" to protect your high grade slot cars. Or you could be cutting them in half, painting them white and gluing them down like they're half buried- that ******* nostalgia look...... OK, maybe throwing them away isn't a bad idea after all


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