Narrowing a WK wheel

Like most guys that do any crawling with their WK, I realized that the stock tires are not the best for crawling. Because of this they had been sitting around going to waste. I also had a set of Pro-Line Dirt Hawgs and no rims for them. The obvious solution to me was to get the Dirt Hawgs onto the WK wheels .... but they would need to be narrowed a bit first.

PARTS & SUPPLIES NEEDED
Stock WK wheels
CA glue (thin is fine)
X-acto knife
Black Sharpie (optional)

TOOLS
Dremel with cutoff disks
Sandpaper (rough & fine)
Small screwdriver

1. The first thing I had to do was to get the stock tires off the WK wheels. This is by far the hardest part of the entire project. Some people use boiling water, others use an oven ... I used brute force, an X-acto knife and a small screwdriver. As you can see, I had a bit of work to do getting all the tire out of the wheels, but with a little patience it all came out.


2. Now you have two options on which way to narrow the rim. You can cut some material off the back for minimal backspacing, or you can do what I did and cut the front. I decided to try cutting the front so that my little dirt hawgs would tuck under the WK a little better than the Moabs I run on the HPI F5s (which I narrowed from the back). Anyway, the benefit of cutting the front it that you'll end up with a little lip you can use to reglue the outer mounting surface to. The downfall is that the cut will be slightly visible. As far as the cutting, I set my dremel (well, dremel knock off) down on my workbench and hold it down. Then I just slowly turn the wheel while it cuts. It's pretty simple.

3. The first cut will give you a little ring that will eventually will be glued back on. It doesn't have to be perfect but the straighter the better.


4. On the next cut, you want to cut as close to the "step" as you can, but leave a small lip for regluing the first rin you cut off.


5. Before you glue the ring back on, you'll want to sand it down so that the mounting surface is pretty even.


6. Do a test fit to make sure everything fits well, then use a little CA glue. I know some of you are going to complain that there is no inner lip. That's true ... but if you want an inner lip, just cut off your outer ring a little differently. Personally, I know I'm gluing tires on here anyway, so it doesn't matter to me.


7. Now, before I show you my final product.... if you recall I mentioned removing some material from the F5 wheels I have my Moabs on. Well, I saved those little rings and decided to use them on these "new" wheels instead of the chrome rings I had just cut off. No special reason, just wanted a different look. If you have something similar you want to use, you can also use the black sharpie to color the open face of where you cut the inner part of the wheel.


Here is a comparison of the backspacing on the narrowed F5s and the WK wheels.


And now for the usual assortment of pics I take after most of my projects....