- TRbeadlock.JPG (34.61 KiB) Viewed 2757 times
Without a machine shop, (back in 2009) I picked up a few oversize steel washers and came up with these rings:
It was a PITA to drill all the holes properly and they were certainly not perfect. It was also a lot of work to get all the screws in and it ate up the wheel to drill extra holes in it.
They were also some sort of galvanized steel so they rusted.
Since TR rings are Aluminum I had to do something.
I contacted a local machine shop back in and sent over some detailed drawings. My basic design was that I'd reuse the 6 hole pattern from the Axial wheel/ring to mount the ring to the wheel. 6 holes are drilled through so you can secure them like a normal Axial ring. The other 16 screws are threaded so they can hold screws that I cut off flush with the back. The shop produced these rings based off my measurements:
They were a massive improvement. Only having to mess with 6 screws again was fantastic and they looked pretty good ... BUT ...I still wanted the rings to be better. I wanted slots in them just like the real thing and a valve stem cut out that was a hair wider. I was working with the machinist on that when, unfortunately, had some family medical issues and disappeared.
That's when I noticed that the plastic wheels were getting stripped in the hex area because of the tons of power and amount of weight I run. So I decided I wanted new aluminum wheels AND better rings. I contacted another machine shop I had worked with in the past on some custom backspaced 1.9 wheels for my little 1.9 comp rig. I was really happy with the work so I sent them detailed drawings on what I wanted in a beadlock ring and wheel ... this is what I got:
A huge improvement again!
The wheels/rings will work with standard Axial 1.9 stuff as they have the same 6 hole pattern. The extra threaded holes are just for the dummy "faux" screws but they certainly completed the look. Once we had this pattern down I started mass producing and thus the beginning of Locked Up RC!
To assemble the wheels/rings used to be quite a chore. You actually had to cut down the screws (cap screws) but we've progressed since these were taken:
Now days We offer screws that are already cut down and scale. Here is the latest version (8/13/13) using our awesome scale hex bolts, scale hubs and Acorn nuts:
We've come a long way since those washers and hope to continue to bring you the best in scale crawler parts for a long time to come!
