Making Wet weather Tyres for the rotary hillclimb racing car RPV02
Making Wet weather Tyres out of old Slicks.
After running this new car for over 1 year and running a hillclimbs in the wet with full slicks, I thought that I would try to reduce the risk of rain at up-coming Hillclimbs by making a full set of wet weather grooved slicks. Hopefully just like when ironically after you have washed your car that it rains, I hope that when I actually have wet tyres that it will reduce the possibility of rain.
To do this I looked at different designs of the grooved wet weather tyres that are currently being used in motorsport. After much consideration I designed my own profile to cut grooves.
Firstly I marked-out the design that it wanted onto the front tyres with white marker pen.
Now that I had a tread design I needed to be able to cut the grooves in the slicks. I friend that races a speedway car said that I could borrow his re-grooving machine, so all I had to do is purchase some cutting tools the size that I wanted. The tools are made in different numbers, 1 is the smallest width and 8 is the widest groove. I decided to use the number 2 cutter tool as this tool is around 8mm wide, you can adjust the depth of the groove when you clamp the tool into the handle of the machine, I set the depth to 4mm.
Having never attempting this before I knew that it would be a trial and error process, so with a bit of reservation I started to cut the first groove.
That was not too bad so I cut the next groove.
The machine cuts a “U” shape groove in the rubber and then you need to pull out the cut groove.
Only 2 more to cut before this one is finished, it is a time consuming job but worthwhile.
The finished wet weather grooved slick ready to be used.
All wrapped-up ready for a rainy day.
Now that I have a full set of wet weather tyres hopefully I won’t need to use them.
