I'm starting with the Tamiya Dragon Wagon, but I've seen some nasty molding seams on the rubber tires. Since the rubber is very soft and flexible, I don't want to touch it with a knife, and simple sandpaper doesn't seem to work
Any suggestions?

See ya! John.

I've run into this on other Tamiya kits.
I know of two things you can do. There may be other so keep watching.
1. Replace them with resin AM stuff - $
2. Take knife to them carefully. Try to peal it like an apple. Go slow and carefully. It's time consuming.

What I've done with soft auto tires is put them on the wheel before sanding. It's tedious, though. If you can somehow get the tire/wheel assembly onto a mototool and spin the tire instead of the sandpapaper, that will work. too.

When I built my DW - I froze the tires to make them stiffer. It's going to take you repeated sessions because the tires thaw quickly from the heat of your fingers and sanding, but it worked.

Gunnie

Thank you gunnie! Your solution seems the most logic and workable to me.
I'll try it out and will let you know.

John

I mounted mine (40 of them now) on a screw headed bit for my dremel tool using one of the front wheel hubs and scraped them while spinning, works great. PM me for a better description.

Rob

I just used a big rough old file and lots of elbow grease...It is long but the tires look worn and used...I even sanded harder on the front tires since these truck were known for wearing hard on the front axles...

Rick

Having a similar problem with Tamiy's FAMO. As above, I used afile followed by wet'n'dry all over the tyre, to simulate wear. For realism, wear down one each tyre differently, but more on the front..yes.

I agree with Rtwpsom2 but I use a sanding bit and put the tire right on the bit. It also helps if your dremel tool is variable speed so you don't grind the tire down too quickly!

Here is a picture of the tool and how I mount the tire:



Hope this was useful, GR8Voyager

Hardware stores and other places that sell furniture re-finishing products sell 3M sanding pads. These pads are basically heavy-grit (60, 90 or 120 grit) sand paper backed with a peice of soft, flexible foam. I sanded my DW tires with a piece of this "sand-pad" and it worked just fine. If I were you, I wouldn't touch those tires with a knife blade -- one slip and you'll never be able to fix it.