Tires - bearing a heavy load?

I myself am an aircraft modeler, primarily 1/72 scale. I've never been a fan of the "over inflated" tire look and sand the bottoms of my tires flat to suggest weight. At that scale any bulge there might be would be very hard to see do I don't heat and press for the bulge.Comparing many different craft in static displays and museums to my end results has satisfied me.

With heavier, larger vehicles, though, I've never seen much of a bulge at all and I'd be hesitant to mess with tires in those cases. I like what others recomended with pressing the model into the ground work some. I'd pay attention to the cross section of the tread too. Make sure that the tires are not rounded from side to side where the wheel will touch the ground. This will make sure the tire tread shoulders will touch the ground instead of looking like the pressure is twice what it should be.

My .02.  

I think you also have to keep it all in general context. I remember someone asking about this very issue in relation to a LAV's tyres. Certainly in Australia, our LAV's run on an inert pressure system, rather than regular air - probably cos of a lot of our vehicles tend to do training ops in rugged bush. In any case, Nitrogen or other inert gasses won't show deformation in the sidewall, as they're stable rather than kinetic.

Sounds like I'm in the minority, but I'm a big fan of bulged tires too.  I've always thought that stiff, round tires looked a little strange and unrealistic on "heavy" models.  Instead of sanding a spot flat, I heat 'em up and squish away - being careful not to produce too much bulge.  On my PBY-5A, the tires already came with a little squish, but it's a great effect having more, and I've gotten several positive comments specifically about that detail.  True, though, that a bulged tire means it has "failed" and would be replaced by a crew ASAP. 

Just like weathering - if you don't want to portray your piece like it's straight off the assembly plant floor, let it have some streaks, dents, rust and dust.  If it's heavy, let the thing push down on the tires!  Remember, these are small, static representations.  We accentuate panel lines to promote an idea of use and depth, even though the real thing doesn't necessarily look like that.

It's just your personal choice - obviously the thing is heavy in real life, so some squish will drive that point home on your model.

I happily agree with the no-bulge crowd.  Those after market bulged A/C tires look rediculas.  If you scaled those up to 1:1 planes, the crewchief would be fired.  I worked flightlines for several years and the only tires I ever saw like those were in the process of going flat.  I drove 18-wheelers for about 5 years after retiring from the military, and the same idea goes for " big trucks " and " large cars ".  Even though their tires are radial, they still don't pouch out.  We always " thumped " them with a hammer or piece of pipe on the treads to check for flats because the duals would not " look " flat, even under load. 

For those who don't know --- Big Trucks change gears while Large Cars change counties.  

zokissima wrote:

Excessive bulges just don't look right. I tend to push the vehicle into the groundwork, or sand the bottom lightly, although I'm not a fan of showing bulges in tires. A lot of my references just don't show any.

Tend to agree with everyone else. The quickest and easiest way is just to flatten the tyres a little with a file. Keeping  it simple stops you spoiling a good model. More realism less effort.