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This is about the combination of two interests, Radio Control vehicles and Science Fiction models. This blog documents my science fiction spaceship and radio controlled vehicle projects.

Thursday 21 July 2011

Venom Creeper Beadlocks

I really like the design of the venom Creeper beadlock wheels. They have really nicely machined in detail and anodising and importantly for me look pretty Sci Fi. The tyres, while they might not be the best performing crawler tyre on the market, look suitably futuristic.
Creeper Kit.

They are made of a pretty soft compound and come with memory foam inserts. The design includes an elliptical bead on the tyre and a matching elliptical groove on the thick plastic wheels and aluminium beadlock rings.
The other interesting thing to note is that they have changed the size of the cap screws which are used to secure the rings. I bought two kits  on Ebay where you can get them pretty cheap at the moment, from different sources, one from the USA and one from Australia and the cap screws are bigger on the Australian and I assume later kit, which is a good thing. Everybody complains about the tiny 2mm screws being fiddly and prone to stripping (not if you're carefull). It means that the recesses on the rings are also machined bigger and the holes in the wheels are moulded slightly bigger for the larger cap screws.
New cap screws on left, older on right.

 The recessed cap screws are also the thing that makes these venom wheels look way better than the Axial 2.2 beadlocks which just sit on the surface of a flat stamped out disc.
The other thing I found is that the Venom beadlocks clamp down on truck sized 2,2 tyres better than the Axial beadlocks as well. It was tough to get these Imex 2.2 Claw Dawgs which are made of a thick and hard rubber onto these wheels but they do just fit.
Gotta Squeeze that ring onto that tyre

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