Originally Posted by disaster999

Digging up an old thread, just seeing what everyone's thoughts on tire inserts...

I usually just buy wheel set which comes preglued from the factory so I never gave it much thought why all tires seem to have this air gap inside the tires. As if the inserts doesnt completely fill up the tire making it feel like the tires are "flat". The car seem to handle really well on the track tho so I didnt really cared. As long as the car runs, its all good.

But recently, the tires we used to run on the track seems to have a bad batch of inserts which gets REALLY soft after a few dozen runs. There is still plenty of meat left on the tire, but it feels like there is no insert left and really hurts the handling. Im suspecting the track temp have something to do with it as it easily gets above 50c in the afternoon sun.

So I decided to build my own tires and choose my own inserts to see if this "fixes" the problem but throughout the different type and brands of insert Ive tried, they all have this air gap in the tire. This bothered me quite a bit until one day I saw a roll of double sided foam tape. This gave me an idea of thickening the insert with the foam and see if this affects handling or not. I first lined the tires with the double sided foam tape then added the insert. It was a bit tricky to get the tires to mount the wheel and seated nicely but i managed. The tires feels pretty filled up with the extra foam and doesnt have any more air gap. Took it to the track for some testing and it doesnt seem to affect handling. The tires arent excessively out of balanced and the foam held up quite fine in the wheel. The car still feels really good on the track and was able to pull in around the same lap times. I put in 8 packs of battery through the tires that day and they seem to be wearing pretty evenly. I dont see any ribbing or funny business with the tires.

One thing I do notice is the tires squealed a bit more in turns than before. It didnt matter if it was a gentle sweeper, or a hard 180 turn the tires squealed just squealed with any steering input. Not a huge deal, just find it funny.

Right now Im experimenting with another set of wheels but this time instead of lining the tires with double sided tape foam first, Ive stuck the foam on the outside of the wheel first. This also filled up the gaps in tire but not as much as my first method. Going to give this set a try and see if they perform any differently.

What are you thoughts about this? interesting? waste of time and money?