Am I the only one that cannot rap their brain around why manufacturers still include vinyl tires? They often do not fit properly, have seams that are hard to correct, and really have no benefit over standard plastic.

What are your opinions- am I just being cranky?

Manufacturing considerations could be part of the explanation.
Moulding something in a hard mold using material which is not flexible requires that there are no undercuts or reverse angles that would catch on the mould. Slide moulding has made the task easier but in the end the moulded part must be possible to get out of the mould.
A tire is full of reverse angles (the tread pattern). Doing a tire in hard styrene leads to horrible compromises, look at the "big foot" tires on Italeris M-923 A1


Compare with the tread pattern on the box-art


Slide moulding increases the cost of the tools and a tire requires many slides to get the tread right.
Some tread patterns are easy to get right, Italeri GMC 2.5-ton for instance


If one of the materials is soft, either the mold (casting resin in silicone moulds) or the part (vinyl tires in steel moulds) the problem is a lot easier to solve.
The problem with resin casting is that it is less suited to mass production (the kits will be more expensive).

For those who, like me, want something else than vinyl there are usually aftermarket tires (and tracks).

A second reason could be a marketing gimmick, "realistic rubber tires", or even "real rubber tires". Similar to wheels that can rotate or motorized tracks, black rubber that doesn't require paint ...

/ Robin

I have the bigfoot kit as well,after sanding they look like the ones on the box cover ,but I had to some sanding to them right .

I agree 100% Jon. I'm working on Tiger Model's Nagmachon, a REALLY nice kit but the tires are a soft, shiny black vinyl. No clue as to how they'll accept paint and will they flake when I put them on the road wheels.
As Robin pointed out in this case, "marketing gimmick". Give me 1 piece all styrene wheels please !
Nice looking trucks Robin. Thanks for sharing !

One thing to keep in mind--and that we Military modelers often forget-- vinyl tires have been on model cars for more than 60 years now, and car modelers actually prefer them in many cases. I think the Military Modeling industry is just following a proven norm that seems to work in another modeling genre. But there are more and more "slide molded" multi-piece tires being offered in many new kits coming on line. I think this is because model manufacturers realize that military modelers like to "fiddle" with the tires more than car modelers do.
VR, Russ

Not my builds !
Someone else did a good job with building and painting though

Found them on the internet using Google and they were the clearest examples of the wheels I could find with a quick search

/ Robin

It could possibly be that manufacturers have started fiddling with the vinyl as well. Making it softer, glueable et.c.
One really horrible example is the tracks included in the first Leclerc tanks by Heller. When I had opened the little bag I had to hang them by the window to let the stink evaporate. They smelled like an accident in a chemical factory. It took months for the stink to reduce to a strong smell.
Old vinyl tyres are harder and on models of civilian cars they usually go on chromed rims ...

/ Robin

It's kind of like the human appendix. Once upon a time it was a necessary organ. Decades ago it was one simple way to get tread on tires.

Though the Renwal truck kits from the 1950s don't have them, the Monogram and Revell do. The Pyro/Life-like Five ton trucks and 155mm Long Tom don't have them but the M35 deuce and a half does. The Monogram jeep has them but the Revell jeep didn't. It was trade off about where to put the detail in the limited molds of the time. Some AMT and MPC car kits used to have multi piece molds where the actual tread was a separate mold and the seams lines were on either edge of it rather than the middle.


Trade-off. Rather than flash around edge of the tire there'd be a seam down the middle. Some builders were very good with that super sharp blade to get rid of the seam and them buff the tire with a file. If done right it actually could replicate the wear of a tire. There was also using a hot knife. Flash would shrivel up and nubs were easily cut. Old time model building skills from when after market was sheet plastic and Plastruct tubing.

Kind of like using a slide rule rather than a calculator.

But there were ways to make it work. Just like soft plastic figures. There's a whole skill set necessary to paint them that most just don't want to learn. The same methods are used to paint vinyl tires BTW.

Yeah, it's easier to complain. And there's nothing wrong with that. You think in this day of advanced molds and materials they'd reinvent the wheel. Some companies use new plastics on the soft plastic figures that paint adheres to and that are glue-able with standard glues. Some don't. Some companies have updated to vinyl tires with multiple molds that accept paint.

Inspired by a line from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:
Complaining is useless! Buy aftermarket!

Steel wool is your friend when it comes to deal with vinyl tires. This removes the shiny look, gives a proper rubber tone and helps apply the weathering.

Olivier

Yes, steel wool works, but I just use varying grades of sandpaper, especially on the treads-- it's an old car modeler's trick, and it gives a very realistic tread wear appearance. I also build classic cars and open wheel racers, and get many compliments on the look of the tires at shows-- folks are always asking how I got the tires to look like real tires-- it's harder to achieve this effect with plastic or resin wheels, but I doubt this is the reason manufacturers use vinyl or rubber in thier kits. I think it ps more of a convenience/cost saving for them.
VR, Russ

I've been building Trumpeter's sdkfz 6 Halbkettenzugmaschine to my delight I found the kit had soft tires.I like these better than hard plastic tires I wish other manufacturers would follow suit. ACESES5

This is AFV Clubs 1/35 Early Matador with soft tires - I shot them with glass beads in my blast cabinet and they looked great at first -
Here is a pic taken in April 2016-



And here it is today just shy of two years later-



As can be seen the tires have gone chalky/crystaline - I don't know if this is a result of the bead blasting - I don't believe so because the crystals are much finer than the glass beads and have that " snowflake " structure when viewed closely .I think it is a chemical change and a good reason to get resin replacements if you are building this kit- I'm going to try to rub these out and hit them with clear flat.

I have the Mid production Matador in my stash and have bought the DEF resin wheel/tire set for it.

Obviously I'm no fan of soft tires - Richard

I have several tracked/wheeled vehicles with vinyl tracks/tires, and so far, none have exhibited any of the problems that have been described here. But then again, most of those models were manufactured/procured/assembled back in the early-to-mid seventies. The most recent tank I put together (Tamiya's 1/35th Panzer II), procured in about 2002/2003, doesn't show any problems (but then I painted those treads - the earlier models have the original, unadorned tracks/wheels). Most of those models sit on a wooden bookshelf. I also have a HEMMT in 1/35th, but I don't recall if it has vinyl or styrene tires.

Myself, I prefer vinyl tires as opposed to styrene tires - the vinyls have always been one-piece affairs, whereas the styrene tires come in two pieces - which means a lot of precision is required to not only get the tread pattern lined up, but also get the circumference of each half to line-up properly. And there's still a seam to deal with!!

@Richard, I love your dio of the lorry & artillery piece, especially the puddle in the road - it looks so real!

Vinyl tyres do have one advantage as a modeller - because they are soft you can paint the main colours on the vehicle first then slip the tyres on afterwards. Strangely, none of my models have suffered from degradation of these tyres and some in the loft go back to the seventies. Of course mine get painted anyway, with Humbrol,something which is supposed to be deadly for them...

Italeri vinyl tires of the early 1970s would melt into the plastic just like Airfix vinyl track of the same vintage. Asian kits of that era (Fujimi, Nichimo among others) were known for vinyl that dried out and cracked or crumbled away altogether. I had a series of 1/40 scale motorized German halftracks and armored cars where the vinyl tires and tracks just crumbled away.

I had ancient Tamiya that snapped due to being brittle but not crumble or crack.

You know something interesting, we used to deal in a lot of "vintage" kits, many almost 60 years old in the LHS I worked in. I would inventory the kits for completeness before auction. On a handful of inventories (I'd say less than 1 in 100) I'd find a rubber/vinyl wheel or track had deteriorated. The majority were as good as the day they were made. Occasionally I'd find identical kits, one might have a problem, the other wouldn't. I think the problem is related more to the environment than we think. How it's stored, displayed handled, and what paints are used may make the difference between a problem or not. Exposure to UV light, cigarette smoke, chemicals, extreme cold or heat, all these can have an effect. We used to get kits in from heavy smokers that often were hard to sell because they were so badly "smoked"-- those always seemed to have a lot of problems, not just with the wheels and tracks, but also with the packaging that became soft and melted or brittle and yellowed over time. So I'm not sure it's just the material the item is made from, it can also be the environment it's exposed to.
VR, Russ

Russ - So you think this tire deterioration may be due to sharing a model cabinet with about a gazillion 1/48 Japanese aircraft then ?

Richard

Richard-- oh I don't know-- it might be from sharing the cabinet with a gazillion early east European models too! In all seriousness, I think you have some "bloom" going on your tires, which could be introduced by your air blasting them, but I doubt it. I suspect it's a precursor to bad things to come. I've seen this on the rubber of protective masks in the Army (I'm a retired Chemical Officer). What happens is, folks who clean rubber masks often use a mild dish soap, which contains a surfactant that is designed to break down grease (the same substances are often found in mold release agents). This in turn creates a "bloom" on the surface as it dries out over time. The chemical reaction then breaks down the rubber. What happened is you may have forced some of the release agent into the rubber tires with the air-blasting, but it's usually found when not rinsing rubber enough after cleaning. I should mention here that rubber and Vinyl should be cleaned like any othe plastic before assembly, as mold release agents are the culprit in lots of "melting" problems.
Nice Matador by the way-- and a great presentation.
VR, Russ

This is an excellent discussion here, guys.

Glad you like it. As an old Chemical soldier, I've had a lot of experience with rubber mask deterioration. So much so that when the Army was developing the M-40 mask they used a material resistant to surfactants (at a much higher cost than the M-17 I might add). During the 70's and early 80's we'd find M17 masks on the floor of our NBC rooms that had literally "rotted" off the head harnesses while hanging on the wall. Especially in hot environments which sped up the deterioration. It was a widespread problem. PM magazine ran several posts about it throughout the 80's. Not so much with the newer equipment. It's the same principal with these vinyl and "rubber" tracks and wheels.unfortunately, the only way to ensure you won't have a problem down the road is to seek out a resin, styrene or metal replacement. There's no guarantee though that a styrene or resin replacement won't suffer similar deterioration 25-50 years down the road-- after all, these products are all petroleum based derivatives just like synthetic rubber and Vinyl. But by then will we even care anymore?
VR, Russ