weathering tires

Hey Chris ... what I usually do is first sand them down a little bit, put some knicks and slashes in the tires with my #11 blade, and finally just weather them with pastel chalks.

Thanks, would that work on plastic tires though? This is the first time I've done a kit without rubber tires. I already have them painted and would like them to look like they have seen some mud. It should give me something to do as I try to figure out what my 2 year old did with the base for the TOW launcher, cats are'nt the only thing to run off with pieces.

Yup .. it would work ... if you want them weathered like they've been through mud though, I'd apply a little "mud" to the sidewalls and the rims and dirty them up good before the pastels.

Cool, as always thank for the help. I will try it and see how it turns out.

Painting them different shades of black/grey also gives the appearance that they have worn differently...

I will take a very course grade sandpaper and run cross ways on the tire to to give them a beat up appearence then run around them with it. Then I take a knife and dig out a few bigger chucks here and there if I want them really beat up.

Eric

I have a course-grit sanding sponge that I run the tires on. This will rough them up a bit and give a "driven on" look.

I like this technique because, you not only get the bottom but depending on how hard you roll the tires across, you also get some of the sides.

Here's a couple of other techniques you might want to try:
If you want it to look like it's driven on pavement after a slog through the mud, muddy the sides of the tires, and then re-blacken (or grayen) the treaded area that would be a bit cleaner from contact with the pavement. There would still be a lot of mud in the tread crevices, though.
Alternately, you could do a vehicle that has just left the road and still has fairly clean tire sidewalls, with mud or dirt just on the treaded section.

Whatever you do, good luck!

Well thats alot of good suggestions, now I just have to figure out which one to do. Thanks for all the tips though ,they will go to use.