10 replies to this topic

[Alchemist]

I'd like to inquire about the 1/24 RTR Cars that came with different colored rear tires, but in general, information regarding  the colored tires themselves being offered back in the 60's.

 

I remember seeing yellow, blue, red, orange and there is a thread discussing marbleized colored tires - I forgot what they were called?!

 

Were there other colors?

 

What slot car brands offered them on their RTR Cars?

 

What was the purpose of doing this?

 

Were the colors different hardness?

 

This was something I've always been curious about and hope you gents can provide me with some historical education about them please.

 

Thank you.

 

Ernie

[Dave Crevie]

AJs sold the multi-colored silicones, and called them "candies". Way back, it was the colored tires that, at least in part, signaled that slot racing was moving away from scale cars into "thingies". It was why I left slot racing, and concentrated on real cars. I was too young to own one myself, but most of my friends were a year or two older, and we spent the weekends working on their cars.

[Phil Hackett]

SBR (a type of closed-cell foam rubber) was the universal rubber used on slot cars after about 1969. The colors meant nothing really. The rubber supplier (Rubatex R.I.P.) made different colors for the HVAC industry. The SBR they sold were also used for insulation for piping and the colors were used to differentiate the piping. This was told to me by Rubatex themselves.

 

Now comes the fun part: since Rubatex intended their SBR for low-stress industrial purposes the quality that slot car racers wanted or needed didn't consistently happen. So the tire makers were at the mercy of whatever showed up. One of the ways to broaden the hedge of the delivery was to order another color occasionally. Somehow the dyes used affected the quality of the rubber: orange was "normal" and blue was softer. There was also tan, green and red available from Rubatex. All this was before "fish" or Wonder Rubber. 

 

Some will ask, "why not have them make the rubber to specs?" Uhm... Rubatex said they could and would do so but it would require buying a "bun" and at the time in the 1990s that was a $20,000 bill that would yield 250,000 tire donuts. With inflation I'm sure that's more than doubled on a huge amount inventory that could be obsoleted at any time by the latest "hot new" rubber.

 

I investigated molded closed-cell that could be consistantly made to spec and be much closer the final ground size but gave it up because it was obvious that the newer imported rubber was going to be much more cost effective.

 

In the end, the color or the tires (the SBR tires) wasn't anything special. They symbolized different batches that could range from useless to the infamous "Jesus" rubber depending on many, many factors.

[Bill from NH]

My commercial tracks in Maine only ran silicones from 1967 until after I moved out of state in '69, AJs had black, white, & gray tires on both aluminum & brass hubs. I thought Candies was an entirely different company. They had a multitude of different colors on two different plated plastic bubs for both 7/8" & 1.25" tires. Some were soft, others were real soft. I used a pair of 7/8" yellow ones on my first scratchbuilt chassis in '68. I checked them a couple days ago & they are still as soft as when I installed them.

 

In the '70s & 80s I ran orange sponge tires. Riggen & AJs had some of the best sponge donuts. Blue sponge was available, but I did not use it. The yellow, tan, green, & red sponge tires came out in the early 80s when I took a few years absence to raise my kids. I got some colored donuts from Alpha but never used those colors. I do not believe all colors handled the some.

[Bill Seitz]

The ingredients of dyes for coloring rubber do have some effect on the rubber. Black rubber is so because it contains carbon black which makes the rubber tougher and longer wearing. Bicycle racing tires were available in several colors; black offered best wet traction and wear, while red or orange was harder and faster/less rolling resistance. Blue BMX tires were popular in the late 70's for their grip on dirt tracks.

 

Of late 60's tires, the best performing ones I encountered were gray. I did use orange tires for a while in the early 80's until I discovered Alpha tan tires. Since their introduction, I've found the black natural rubbers ("natural" or "wonder") to be superior to any color SBR.

 

In a group conversation in the early 90's, Joel Montague (Camen) spoke of going to a warehouse where the SBR rubber was sold in sheets and handling various sheets of the stuff looking for what felt to him as having desirable characteristics for slot car tires. He said the rubber was being made in lots of different colors for footwear, thongs (flip-flops/zorries) and athletic shoes. He was always on the lookout for purple rubber, and at one time did find some that was faintly purple. It provided only mediocre performance. In the early 90's, Joel found some off-white rubber that he thought was very desirable, and it became a very popular tire choice among wing car racers in the Mid-Atlantic USRA where the tires made from this were known as "snow tires".

[Tim Wilkins]

Dynamic had RTR cars with 1/8' threaded axle tires in gray.

Many colors were available as accessory tires.

You can still find some of these new on Ebay but you will need to sand them down some to get any kind of grip on the track.

[Pablo]

The only thing I have to add is, (with very few exceptions) old donuts are old stale donuts.

No matter the color. No matter what type of mystery goop you put on them.

You end up with soft stale rubber. Just my experience.

 

Being kept refrigerated over the years certainly helps, but how do you know if they have been?

I bought a bunch of Bud Bartos oranges years ago. They still trim just fine and work very well on the track on vintage cars.

 

Your results may vary.

Once you start trimming and trueing 50 year old rubber, they usually turn to shredded lettuce.

 

Trimming them slow may help somewhat, or it may not. Only one way to find out.

If you are wanting them just for display, don't let me dissuade you.

 

Mid America website shows a good donut selection with lots of colors 

[Dave Crevie]

Twinn-K had a version of Candies they called Twinkies. The Twinn-K tires had die cast hubs. All the AJ's had plastic hubs IIRC. But then, I'm in the throughs of dementia these days.(LOL)

[Martin]

Here are a few in my stash, hope they brighten up your day? Remembering these were made and sold in the psychedelic 60's

 

[Mike Patterson]

Twinn-K had a version of Candies they called Twinkies. The Twinn-K tires had die cast hubs. All the AJ's had plastic hubs IIRC. But then, I'm in the throughs of dementia these days.(LOL)

Twinn-K and AJ's weren't the same company. Candies were not a Twinn-K/AJ's product, but I don't remember who marketed them.

[Dave Crevie]

Twinn-K and AJ's were competitors when I was racing. AJ's called their swirled tires Candies. Twinn-K called theirs's Twinkies. If the two merged, it happened after 1968, which was the last time I visited a slot track, when I was out in LA. My cousin out there was still slot racing then. I had quit in 1966. Somewhere I have one of his cars I brought back with me, an early thingy.