Front Hex wheels advantage??

[Y'ernat Al]

...in the last 3 months i have picked up 32 pairs of mounted buggy tires for about 90 bucks.

I was thinking the the same thing reading this thread....talk about availability of some different options to try.

[cautrell05]

Oh, yeah. I'm set for a long time for buggy tires. My shortcourse and stadium truck are both set up with 12 millimeter hex is all the way around. I am glad I changed those over, it makes things a lot easier. however I really don't see an advantage of the buggy.

[Lowgear]

I understand that the pin is still being used to drive the hex, but once you clamp it to the axle I thought that would add some extra strength. Be even better if they were splined though.

Tamiya tried splines back in the day, and if I remember right it didn't turn out so well.

[cautrell05]

splines are ideal on larger stuff for you can precisely machine them, but on small scale stuff it gets expensive to do it right

[Coelacanth]

What I hate about splines is how 2 mated, splined items can become practically inseparable once tightened, and could be frustratingly difficult to detach. I'm having nightmares right now remembering pulling the Pitman arm off my Charger last spring. Splines aren't the ideal choice for something that gets removed & reinstalled frequently.

[longboardnj]

I understand that the pin is still being used to drive the hex, but once you clamp it to the axle I thought that would add some extra strength. Be even better if they were splined though.

Tamiya tried splines back in the day, and if I remember right it didn't turn out so well.

splines stink i had tamiya dif splines strip out on me many times . look at new dif splines on the tamiya mini cooper m05 now (no splines). they are doing this now(no splines) on other cars too

[85Edinger]

Sounds like material for a new thread.

[soniccj5]

Won a $25.00 JConcepts gift card during the Short Course Showdown this past weekend, so I odder the axles, hazard wheels and hex for my SC10. If they work well I might convert the B4 and vintage RC-10.

[slotcarrod]

I built my B4.2 with no hexes! My thoughts are:

First, I have many NEW sets of wheel tire combos premounted for my older B4 and B4.1.
Second, the hexes are much heavier than the older system, I want less rotating mass and less unsprung weight!
Thirdly, if it won't make my car get faster lap times, I don't want it! So why bother?

The bearing placement is bs! Greater stress is placed on an inboard bearing, think of the axle as a lever The weight of the inner bearings, aluminium hex, steel axle, pin and nut is much greater than bearings, aluminium axle and steel screw of the older system!

SC Trucks, the hex is a great idea but in buggys serve nothing IMO!

[longboardnj]

I built my B4.2 with no hexes! My thoughts are:

First, I have many NEW sets of wheel tire combos premounted for my older B4 and B4.1.
Second, the hexes are much heavier than the older system, I want less rotating mass and less unsprung weight!
Thirdly, if it won't make my car get faster lap times, I don't want it! So why bother?

The bearing placement is bs! Greater stress is placed on an inboard bearing, think of the axle as a lever The weight of the inner bearings, aluminium hex, steel axle, pin and nut is much greater than bearings, aluminium axle and steel screw of the older system!

SC Trucks, the hex is a great idea but in buggys serve nothing IMO!

some weight on the front could be a good thing for traction... maybe,.. i dont know but i see alot of weight adding items for sale and i would not make that my desiding factor...as i said before the real benefit i see with hex you dont wreck wheels or bearings as much, plus wheel swaps are much faster and easy. ive seen people wreck wheels trying to get bearings out and ive see people wreck bearings the same way..all in all if you need to swap wheels a few dozen times it really puts extra wear on parts even if your a pro at doing it. with hex you dont have to worry about them issues. as far as anything else i dont think hex on a buggy does anything more for you. trucks are cool cause you can swap front and rear tires. im in the same boat as you . i have alot of old style buggy fronts so all my buggies will remain nonhex but if i could turn back time id make all rcs hex so i can swap all truck wheels around and all my 2wd rcs can get the front wheels swaped with out changing out bearings.. you gotta admit if you need to swap out a wheel the hex set up is super easy and fast. ive changed front wheels 3 times at a track. i had to remove bearings each time if i had hex that would have been great

[Coelacanth]

Good point; with in-wheel bearings, sometimes getting the bearings out of the wheels can be a royal pain. And speaking about weight, check out this item I bought which I'll be installing on my OptiMutt project car. I'll call 'em "hexles". I think they're pretty cool.

[Orange]

I just thought of another advantage to hex's... don't know why I hadn't thought of this already because it was my favorite part of of racing Kyosho cars all those years...

NO-MORE-LOST-WHEEL-PINS

Not that its that big of a deal, just annoying to me.

[CBR240]

Many good points made here on the + and - to hex. I've been on the fence about converting to hexes for a while.

I have 2 old RC10s, and use the old style bearing in front wheels on both; but we also have a B4.2 with the hexes.

I have 6 sets of tires for the old RC10s and have a set of wheel bearings installed in each. So swapping them is not an issue for me, as I don't remove the bearings to change wheels.

Where it makes a difference for me is in wheel/tire cleaning. I either have to be careful to not get the bearings wet, or I have to remove them so I can really clean the wheels/tires. I don't want to remove and reinstall bearings each time I clean, due to the wear what would cause on the plastic mount location on the wheels.

So the main advantage for my use to the hexes would be, I would not have wheel bearings to fuss with when cleaning front wheel/tires. That's nice, but not enough to get me to change to hexes, .... at least yet. The greater wheel selection would be nice. But, ...., what would I do with the over 30 (6 set * 4 front wheel bearings + spares + ...) I have now?

[Snaab9-2]

Good point; with in-wheel bearings, sometimes getting the bearings out of the wheels can be a royal pain. And speaking about weight, check out this item I bought which I'll be installing on my OptiMutt project car. I'll call 'em "hexles". I think they're pretty cool.

Hexles.JPG

Interesting! Do these let you put hex wheels on the front? If so, did you like them? Can you still get them?

Thanks!

[Chewbacca]

Other than standardizing your wheel options, a 12mm hex would provide a more stable mount, as it distributes the pressure from the mounted wheel more evenly. The wheels are thus less likely to wobble, and won't wobble as a result of bearings wearing out. With the bearings-in-wheels mounting method, over time you'd potentially get wear & tear inside the grooves where the bearings fit, the bearing holes on the axle shafts would widen slightly over time, and the bearing inners will also wear over time; all of those things would contribute to a slightly unstable wheel mount.

With hexes on axle shafts, the only thing that would potentially wear out would be the hex depression inside the wheels, and due to it having 6 pressure points, the wheels stay on the hexes very firmly and it's very rare to see broken hex standoffs. Just my 2¢.

I have to tell you that this is not the case with the wobble.

The bearings still can and will wear out. In the hex conversion you now have the added lever of the rotating axle. So if a bearing starts to wear out in an in-wheel setup the wobble is exactly the amount of play that the bearing has developed. Now in the same case with the hex conversion the amount of wobble that develops is the play of the bearings times the distance of the axle.