Powerhobby Scorpion XL (X-MAXX) Sidewall Armor

thingiverse

If any of you have a large scale RC car with Powerhobby XL wheels/tires, and enjoys letting their pooch chase it like a mechanical rabbit, you may be aware of how particularly vulnerable the sidewalls are to punctures and rips by an overly excited dog. This has been my experience and while I'm not sure if it's just the nature of how soft these specific tires are, or if all tires of this size are prone to such easy rips, I decided to try and do something about it. While my girl is mostly behaved when chasing the car, she does get particularly excited and has trouble controlling her urge to nip at the tires at times. With a large vehicle like the XMAXX, tires get expensive quickly. This is my solution to try and extend the life of my tires by adding a thin TPU armor shield to the outer rim and shield the tire sidewall. I haven't had a chance to run it full speed yet, so the design may yet prove to be fruitless or require some tweaking if it self destructs, but I will attempt to post updates here as to how well the design works in the field and holds up to abuse. The design attaches to the inner rim between the spokes on the PowerHobby Scorpion XL wheel / tire combo. While it could be printed in other materials, I've gone with TPU to keep it somewhat flexible. It secures very well with just the inner clips, but I also went ahead and cleaned the tire sidewall, added a generous bead of silicone glue (E6000) between the tire and the armor, placing it face down against a flat surface and with ~10lbs of weight until cured. This should help ensure a good bond keep everything together at high speed and the occasional enthusiastic nip (dog tax pic of the offender included). Update: I've been running the tire shield on all 4 tires now for the last few sessions and not only have they held up, they've done exactly what I intended and prevented any additional tire damage. So far, I've noticed no degradation of performance, and while the little bit of extra rotating mass they add would be expected to affect battery drain, it has not been noticeable to any extent that I've experienced. Now the dogs get to have their fun and I can worry less about having to replace the tires all the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8Kjc2N0chw