Fantastic tip Freddy! I’ve been building my candy green edition Hopper. The first rear tire was no problem. The other was giving me fits!😩 Great job!👍😊
@@HaydadRC crazy right?! There seems to be two camps with these tires. Those that can do it by hand and those that need the jaws of life to make it work lol No in-between. You have to wonder if the molding process is slightly different for some of the tires or if they are all made on the same machine??? Who knows.
A great piece of advice, thank you. I soaked them in warm water for a while first too, that extra mailability combined with your plier trick, I saved so much time and frustration.
Hardest part of the build lol I used snipper handles as a tire irons also thanks for the rear axle tutorial for the grasshopper after that I figured how to use and understand the manual 😎👍🏻
@@FastFreddyRC I once builded a Grasshopper for a friend, but that was over 30 years before. I don't remember how I solved it. But I had seen lots of videos here, heating the creatoe complaining about these tires on their ReRes.
@@RCBirds interesting. Yeah I went looking and found videos of people heating the tires, soaking them in warm water etc etc. I even found a video showing you how to do it exactly how Tamiya tells you to do it and he made it look so easy. BUT an hour later I was still no further ahead. Other than fingers that were so sore and a few choice words by the end of it lol. Some of the videos show the Hornet tires. Thing is, the hornet tires have a lot more play and room to maneuver the wheels into the tires. My frog tires, which are the same as the hornet, were no problem doing it the Tamiya way. Anyway..never again lol - This new method of getting them on is the bomb! Was so much easier...still with some struggle, but we're talking a minute at most to get them on.
@@FastFreddyRC one last thought. Hornet and Frog have those spikey tires, maybe they have more flex than the paddle tires of the Grasshoppoer🤔. I keep your video in mind. Thanks for all your effort in this topic. Great job. hve a nice weekend and stay safe
I set the actual plastic wheel on the counter, took the tire and turned the inner opening out and pulled it open/stretched it with my fingers and then pushed that over the wheel as it was sitting down on the counter. Maybe hard to describe but that worked really well. Put each wheel in the tire in about 30 seconds.
An even easier way is to use hair drier to heat tire up extremely hot and they slip in without any tools. Doing it this way also gets rid of that white film on the tires.
Thanks for the advice. What worked for me was rotating the wheel as I was pulling the tire over it with the pliers. I think my kit might be a bit old because the rubber was very stiff and was turning white as I was working with it. My tires now look like they've got freezer burn. But what a pain in the ass. I've been building kits for 35 years but I guess I missed out on all this fun by always buying high-end kits. I thought I'd go back and do some of these "beginner" kits I never bothered with, but I would say the difficulty of getting the tires on the wheels makes the Grasshopper not really a good beginner kit.
Yeah the tires are very stiff even if the kit is new...which is why the car bounces all over the place lol - But it definitely must be old if the tires have "freezer burn". I would agree with you that with as much trouble those tires are it doesn't feel like a beginner kit when you get to that stage. It was infuriating to say the least. But at least now if I built another I could get the job done without much frustration.
@@FastFreddyRC Yeah, thanks again. I was hesitant to buy any other Tamiya kits of this sort because I was afraid they'd have the same types of wheels, but now that I know how to do it it shouldn't be a problem.
Haha first thing I thought of when I saw you pulling on that wheel like that was when the dentist removed my wisdom teeth lol. Just reefer on them to no end. I remember that Seinfeld episode lol. Buggy looks good.
@@FastFreddyRC so nostalgic seeing these cars and builds of yours. Hard to believe the 80's were so long ago now. I can remember the excitement. Going into Radio shack and sweating like a manic lol. Love your explanations and thoroughness.
Did you pull up evenly all around or just try to pull one side up completely? Very odd. I've been doing this method for this type of tire/wheel combo for both the hornet and the grasshopper and have not had this happen. One other thought around this...when you use the pliers are you grabbing most of the tire like in the video or just the edge/rim? If just the edge or rim it might not be enough of the tire to get a really good grip.
Hi Matt! Did you eventually get them in? This method definitely works but as you can tell from my breathing in the video it's still a bit of a trouble spot and requires you to have a bit of a workout lol
