Narrow Tires
With everybody making their own tire sets I started drooling over the potential of making some narrowed tires to go with my narrowed/positive offset wheels. Narrowing the little Ground Hawgs I had would make them a little more scale looking and provide me with an opportunity to see just how difficult/easy this is to do.
PARTS & SUPPLIES NEEDED
Your choice of tires
TOOLS
Rubber Cement or Rubber CA glue
CA Glue (thin is fine)
Curved scissors
Straight scissors
Tweezers
Paint Pen (not black)
1. The first step, and the hardest, is to make that first cut into a perfectly good tire. With the Ground Hawgs, I decided to remove about 10mm from the center. This meant I could cut down the original seam and right through the lugs on one of the halfs. I decided to do this because it gives more surface area for the glue to hold. If I had cut down alond one of the tread voids I'd have less rubber to work with. Anyway, how you cut is your call. I actually found that my straight scissors worked best but in places that I wanted to nip off a little excess, the curved come in handy. So, cut that junk in half...
2. Just take your time putting the tires back together. I decided to go one lug at a time and move in a criss cross pattern (like tightening the lugs on a 1:1 wheel). That way I would have less chance of having a riser somewhere. So, with one half laying down, I dropped a dab of glue on and then squeezed the lugs together with tweezers. After a lug was glued, I hit it with the paint pen so I'd know it had already been done. It makes it a little easier to keep track of things.
3. Once all the CA glue dried, I flipped the tire upright and put in some rubber cement. It's not totally necessary but it will help hold things together and seal holes. I used my thumb to hold the sidewall down and dabbed it in until I was satisfied.
4. Once the Rubber Cement is completely dry you can slap your foams back in and mount them up.
All in all, this was not as hard as I thought it would be, but there are some things to avoid:
