Need some tires for a 1/43 Land Rover (Armor guys help?)

[SteveK2003]

I have an Airfix/Heller 1/43 Land Rover kit that I want to finish fairly stock, but the kit 'tyres' are nothing more than smooth plastic. Look like airplane wheels.

I have an 1/35 Academy M151A1 military jeep (Not a true 'jeep', has independant suspension all around) that I bought a while back, and tried the tires on a whim. They are 3mm taller than stock, which equates to 5" in real life. It's to tall to just slip them on, and while they'd look great with the truck lifted, the axles, leaf springs, and driveshafts are molded to the chassis, so it would be a lot of work to do so.





The Land Rover tires 18.3mm tall, and the jeep tires are 21.3mm. I'm not averse to buying a whole kit to get tires, since I can cast them and still build the original kit, but I don't want to buy kit after kit.

I also need some radial-type tires of the same size for a Citroen DX Paris-Dakar racer.

[Amazon]

Since the armour modelling scene is huge ,there should be some aftermarket stuff that could fit?

[SteveK2003]

Yeah, or I'm hoping there is a kit out there I can use. I would post on the Fine Scale Modeler forum, but my keyboard is on the fritz and I didn't notice I put in the wrong email to register. So, I'm waiting for them to email me a confirmation number so I can post.

[Macdaddy4738]

1/43 is an odd scale for military models...its going to be hard to find a model in that scale...

i found this at HLJ (Hobby Link Japan)

http://www.hlj.com/product/HEL80113 it may work..its an off road type vehical...and its also Heller

http://www.hlj.com/product/HEL80112 this too...

http://www.hlj.com/product/HEL80195 another

dunno if these will help

[Merkava]

This is certainly a last-resort, but you could try re-sizing the Jeep tires.

Stick the tires in the freezer overnight to make them hard, then chuck them in a drill or dremel (or any spinny device) and pare them down with coarse sandpaper. If the tires warm up too much, just put them back in the freezer until they're hard again. I know it's not the fastest or easiest solution, but it will look better in the end than the stock piles-of-crap. Also it is free.

P.S.: You'll probably lose some tread detail, but then you can cut new tread in the tire with a sharp x-acto.

[SteveK2003]

Mac-

Well, the Land Rover is 1/43, but the jeep is 1/35. Since the Land Rover is bigger than a jeep I assume the smaller tires in a larger scale look normal on it. There must be SOMETHING out there that uses slightly smaller tires.

Merkava-
Yeah, I thought about that, but it would be tricky to get them to line up right without losing so much detail. I think that would be more work than to re-do the chassis and suspension, so I'd just lift it before that.

[bhop73]

The closest you're going to get as far as armor models go is 1/48. I don't know how much of a difference it is though. Tamiya makes a Kubelwagen in 1/48. Those wheels would probably look right on the kit, as far as styling, if the size is ok. http://www.hlj.com/product/TAM32501

I happen to have one, so I measured it for you, the diameter with the tires is 15mm. I'm thinking that'll be too small for you though..

[SteveK2003]

Yeah, I definitely need tires from a 1/35th scale vehicle, just have to find the right one, or commit to the work to modify the chassis.