Sunday April 25, 2004

Front Tire Sanding In A Pinch

Although this tip isn't anything new to veteran enthusiasts, I thought that I would share it for those who are just joining us.

I was tuning my Fly Ferrari today and noticed that the front wheels really needed to be trued. The front end of the car had a noticeable hop to it and not only did this look horrible coming out of the corners, it certainly decreased performance. I removed the front wheels off the plastic front stub axles by hand and thought at first to mount them on a spare axle and put it inside my Dremel Moto-Tool.

Well you can fit the axle inside the Dremel but it won't tighten enough to give you reliable grip. I then noticed that the axle shaft seemed long enough to fit on the end of my drill. It was and I placed it inside the drill as shown. You only need to tighten this down HAND TIGHT. This way you won't damage the wheel, yet grips it tight enough for sanding.

Once the wheel was firmly in place, I turned on my drill and used a Dremel barrel sanding attachment as shown. This made quick work of truing this tire and I even rounded the outside edges a little more due to the close tolerances these wheels have on the model.

You can use virtually anything to sand these down but I found the barrel sanding bits to work perfectly and gave me what I wanted: A true front tire in a very small amount of time.

Since the front wheels are mounted a little low and cause them to bear the weight on the front end, having them true makes a big difference. However, I sanded these down a great deal more than just true to reduce the overall diameter of the tire. This helped make my Ferrari have a better overall "tri-pod" effect as now the tires barely touch the track and allow the front guide to rest firmly in the slot.

Of course this is not the perfect way to do this, and there are many different ways to get this same result. I just know it works great for my racing and in no time you should be back on the track with a much smoother model. Give it a try sometime and see for yourself.

- Harry

As always feel free to contact me about this article or just the hobby in general at harry@homeracingworld.com, or better yet drop into our Message Forum and share your thoughts with other enthusiasts!