RC Car wheels

Has any one ever used the tyres off an RC car to make some wheels for a feather weight.

I was just looking at my old RC car and thought they where about the right size and you can probably get some fairly grippy compounds as used on RC racing cars.

Youd probably have to make your own hubs as Id have thought the hubs from the RC car wouldnt be strong enough to take the punishment of a robot battle.

Just thought it might be an easy way to get some fairly grippy wheels.

What do people think?

Richard Wenman
Team Mayhem

People do often make their own wheels and stick rubber (often bike tyre screwed on). It might be worth making hubs for these RC car tyres but most RC car tyres are quite small (I think... are they about 50mm diameter max?). The compounds of RC car tyres will probably perform quite/very well but robustness of the whole wheel is a key issue.

I think there is a feather called Electric Blue (or something like that) which uses 4 wheels from RC monster trucks, I cant remember if they used custom hubs but the wheels certainly looked grippy.

http://www.electric-blue.co.uk/Elec_Images/MiniComp.gifhttp://www.electric-blue.co.uk/Elec_Images/MiniComp.gif

Most 1/10 model car tires have a diameter of 65 mm. You could look into 1/8 scale model tires, those should be just about right.

There once was a Dutch heavyweight robot named Cirkill which had six 1/5 scale RC car wheels. I havent seen anything from the team in ages, but their website is still online:

http://www.cirkill.com/http://www.cirkill.com/

I have used RC wheels with standard rims on my feather. I drilled out and taped a bigger hole in the standard nuts and replaced the foam with higher density foam. The tyres only last a few meets.

i used to use RC wheels on PloughBot before i moved to the Rc Wars blue wheels. They gave increadable amounts of grip, but the batteries went flat in seconds. Also i used expanding foam inside to glue the tyres on and harden them up, but it eventually went lumpy and so the robot wud hop along slightly

would completly rubber RC wheels work instead of filling them with foam or would they just wear out?

it depends on how hard/tough the rubber was. most wheels would be a bit too soft and when turning tend to rip off their hubs.

I had to experiment with different foams until I came across the right one. The wheels should be able to flatten a little on the bottom to increase surface area. The tyres were glued to the rims with CA. The tyres dont last very long.

I have developed a hub / tyre combination for the Zeobot featherweight. It uses a 64mm tyre on a split steel hub. The split hub actually clamps the tyre so it cannot spin on the hub. The tyre is filled with a 16mm diamter neoprene foam cord insert. The whole wheel assembly will fit direct onto a 6mm motor shaft (grub screw), the other side of the hub has an extended 6mm shaft to go straight into an outer bearing so the wheel gets supported on both sides. The Zeobot uses a standard motor with 11:1 gearbox. Makes for a really compact solution. In fact one version of the Zeobot has 8 wheel drive with this set-up.

Paul