Rotary Hillclimb Racing Building Rotary Hillclimb Racing Car Making Wet weather Tyres for the rotary hillclimb racing car RPV02

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.

Marked out Slick

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.

The grooving machine & grooving cutter.

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.

Starting to groove the slick

That was not too bad so I cut the next groove.

Cutting the 2nd groove

The machine cuts a “U” shape groove in the rubber and then you need to pull out the cut groove.

Pulling out the groove

Only 2 more to cut before this one is finished, it is a time consuming job but worthwhile.

Only 2 more to do before finishing

The finished wet weather grooved slick ready to be used.

The finished item.

All wrapped-up ready for a rainy day.

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.

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