What happens if there is NO aftermarket resin tires for your model? How can you make your tires look better than their current state? How can you avoid having to paint the tire logos by hand? How do you avoid “Slivering” of your waterslide decals over the gummy rough surface?
When it comes to rubber kit tires, the most import thing is to figure out how to make the sidewall surface smooth enough to accept a waterslide decal to conform to the side wall with out that cloudy slivering of the clear part of the decal.
Most of the time when we get our kit, we open it up and see these gummy, crude round black mini donuts, that a lot of times have this HUGE indention of a tire brand sticking out, which real race cars don’t have huge logo intentions to this extreme. Most beginner model builders will try to knock themselves out and TRY to use white paint and brush paint on the little indented letters…….and that never works out too well….sigh……
Basically, the best thing to start with, is a big sanding file and sand those nasty letters off your rubber tires.
After you sand the letters off, take Clear Acrylic paint, DONT use enamel or Lacquer because you will have a nasty mess on your tires, because enamel or Lacquer does not dry too well on a rubber surface, ACRYLIC does! I prefer to use Tamiya X-22 Clear Acrylic on my sidewalls and it dries very fast. Model Masters Clear acrylic works great too.
Tamiya X-22 Clear Mini Acrylic Paint available at AMAZON
Once the Tamiya X-22 Clear Acrylic dries, use Indycals tire decals and lay those on the new clear smooth shinny sidewall surface! I recommend using Walthers Solvaset Decal solution for Indycals decals. Let dry for 24 hrs
Walthers Solvaset Decal Solution available at Amazon
Paint over your sharp clean white tire decals with Tamiya X-19 Smoke acrylic paint to dirty up the white letter surface as there is no such thing as a bright clean white letter surface on a race car tire, giving it a bit of a weathered look will make your tires look even more believable. After the Tamiya X-19 Smoke dries, apply Tamiya XF-86 Flat Clear over the top of those layers.
The follow products available at AMAZON
Be sure to take your file after you finish your acrylic and tire decal process on your sidewalls, go ahead and take your sanding file and rough up and sand off the seam on the flat tire surface
