Jimmy's Flip Flop Donut Tyres

[jimmyslots 1950]

 Having a large collection of slot cars is a good thing but in reality with not regular use a lot of the tyres go hard & become useless.

I've always liked to tinker so making my own cheap tyres was always on my bucket list in my retirement.

Reject shop supplied the Flip Flops at about $2.50 a pair,roughly cutting 24 Donuts per pair or 20c a set ,Temu were the suppliers of Tile hole saws at about $8 for a pack of 10 in various sizes.Tyres are roughly 15mm wide & trim down to 13 mm,on the F1 in the pics they are about 17mm wide so I trimed 2 donuts for each wheel.

For my track I treated the tyres with a mix of spray grease & Zippo.

I cut the inside holes first ,about 12 per Flip Flop, then I've made a simple plug to make the outside cut concentric,an old wheel will probably do the job if you don;t have access to a lathe.

Flip Flops are not as grippy as Plafit or Scaleauto sponge tyres that we race with but i like the way they move around,to me too much grip dosen't seem real. 

[Kieran]

Dumb question # 1:  why do you treat the tyres?

[jimmyslots 1950]

Hi Kieran

Raw tyres just cleaned with Zippo & Tape work well,the treatment allows you to be more aggressive without being stupid fast like Plafit sponge on a spray gooed track,just my preference for a fun drive with the rear moving around nicely.

Cheers.

[Vinno]

Thanks Jimmy, now we need to get around a few shops measuring the shore rating on some Flip Flops, (thongs in Australia) and see if we can get a tyre to beat those Scaleauto’s. 

[big dennis]

The use of 'thong' rubber to make slot car tyres goes back more than 50 years, to a time when a degree of self-sufficiency was required to overcome a lack of retail outlets, in Tasmania in particular.

i often wondered why the 'donuts' made by a friend of mine in Hobart were 'two-tone' - usually brown, with an outer ring of off-white. It was because the thongs that he used as the source material had a brown 'upper' with a white bottom.

Because most of the club tracks of the post-commercial era (after the late 1960s) had an abrasive Ferrodor surface the tyres would provide a reasonable level of grip.

The owner of one club track in Northern Tasmania uses a type of industrial rubber (EPDM?) to make all the tyres for those racing at his track. It literally lasts forever.

Den