I'm not sure if it's been done before, or if anyone's ever had a need to for that matter, but I had a silly idea about making some mega slippy tyres for my DRB, and as I couldn't be arsed to work on any of my real cars today due to a heavy hangover, I thought I'd set about seeing if it would actually work.
So take 4x used RC drift tyres, some offcuts of titanium pipe from Carl Fogartys superbike exhaust, a bandsaw, a lathe, and Craig from next doors machining skills, and of we go.
Setting the lathe for the delicate wheel and tyre setup.
Starting to flatten the tyre.
You get the idea where the titanium's going.
We had to create an aluminium insert for the titanium tube as the pieces were so small the lathe would snag them and destroy them otherwise.
Turning the titanium down to the correct width.
Another view of the tyre without the wheel. It's turned to make the titanium a real interference fit.
The four tyres fitted to my dirty DRB ready for testing.
The rear after a whole batteries worth of testing.
The fronts.
And the result? Well I'm far from good at RC drifting, but our new track has made the cars to fast for me to learn tbh (long term Mitto is going to slow it down by waxing I think). I really wanted to slow my car down massively, but I was going through new tyres at a ridiculous rate of knots, hence this slightly extreme idea.
I'm pretty sure that if we were to have these tyres made commercially they would have to cost over £200, however they barely wear, they make the car super slippy, and for extra cool points occasionally you get massive titanium grinding sparks mid corner which looks similar to when you run a real drift cars tyres down to the cords. I'm chuffed with them.
So take 4x used RC drift tyres, some offcuts of titanium pipe from Carl Fogartys superbike exhaust, a bandsaw, a lathe, and Craig from next doors machining skills, and of we go.
Setting the lathe for the delicate wheel and tyre setup.
Starting to flatten the tyre.
You get the idea where the titanium's going.
We had to create an aluminium insert for the titanium tube as the pieces were so small the lathe would snag them and destroy them otherwise.
Turning the titanium down to the correct width.
Another view of the tyre without the wheel. It's turned to make the titanium a real interference fit.
The four tyres fitted to my dirty DRB ready for testing.
The rear after a whole batteries worth of testing.
The fronts.
And the result? Well I'm far from good at RC drifting, but our new track has made the cars to fast for me to learn tbh (long term Mitto is going to slow it down by waxing I think). I really wanted to slow my car down massively, but I was going through new tyres at a ridiculous rate of knots, hence this slightly extreme idea.
I'm pretty sure that if we were to have these tyres made commercially they would have to cost over £200, however they barely wear, they make the car super slippy, and for extra cool points occasionally you get massive titanium grinding sparks mid corner which looks similar to when you run a real drift cars tyres down to the cords. I'm chuffed with them.
