AMT Sandkat Dune Buggy Tires?

[Casey]

Were the rear tires used in AMT's Sandkat Dune Buggy and AMT's other dune buggy kits -- Sandbagger, Sand Hog, and Sand T Buggy -- used in any other kits?

 

Size comparison with AMT "new" pie crust slick:

[Casey]

It looks like AMT's North American Van Lines and Dirt Hauler truck kits used these tires first:

[Snake45]

My old Sand T had tires that looked like that--4 of them. I was given to understand at the time that they were the same tires as the rear tires on their Indy Lotus Ford kit of the day. (When is Round 2 gonna reissue THAT?) 

[Casey]

51 minutes ago, Snake45 said:

the rear tires on their Indy Lotus Ford kit

[pack rat]

Th '63 Willard Battery Indy roadster had them (in "big and little" form) as well.

Believe it or not, the same tires also appeared in at least some (maybe all) of the 1968 Mustang Mach 1 concept kits; at least they did in the two I have.  I don't know what happened there.  

 

[Art Anderson]

4 hours ago, pack rat said:

Th '63 Willard Battery Indy roadster had them (in "big and little" form) as well.

Believe it or not, the same tires also appeared in at least some (maybe all) of the 1968 Mustang Mach 1 concept kits; at least they did in the two I have.  I don't know what happened there.  

 

Yes,  those tires are replica's (sans FIRESTONE raised lettering) of the new-for-1963 Firestone wide oval tires that were specially developed for the Lotus-Ford team cars, built by Colin Chapman, driven by Jim Clark (green with yellow racing stripe) and Dan Gurney (white with dark blue racing stripe), that stood the USAC "Racing Fraternity" on their collective ears when they showed up for practice and qualification for the 1963 running of the Indianapolis 500 mile race.  Made to fit 15" rims front and rear, those tires caused a real stir at the Speedway,  with the Offy roadster owners and drivers demanding equal access to them.  Halibrand went into a crash program to create, cast and machine 15" wheels to fit the standard front-engine Offenhauser-powered roadsters, with only a dozen or so roadster owners being able to get them in time for that year's 500 Mile Race. Parnelli Jones's Agajanian Willard Battery Special got them, along with the new Firestone tires, but barely half the field were able to obtain them in time for the 500.  By the Milwaukee race about 10 days or so after Indy, every car, with the exception of the Novi supercharged V8 cars had them (the Novi's didn't run Milwaukee, IIRC); the old standard 16" front wheels and 18" rear wheels  rears were consigned to the attics of virtually every USAC Championship race team.  As an interesting sidebar here, the controversy inspired AJ Foyt to test (and scrub in) 15" Goodyear stock car tires at the 5/8 mile oval at Indianapolis Raceway Park (the site of the Labor Day Weekend National Drags), and showed off a stack of Goodyears outside his team garages in Gasoline Alley--which inspired Goodyear to make a run at Indianapolis for real, beginning in May 1965.

Art

[Casey]

14 hours ago, pack rat said:

Th '63 Willard Battery Indy roadster had them (in "big and little" form) as well.

Believe it or not, the same tires also appeared in at least some (maybe all) of the 1968 Mustang Mach 1 concept kits; at least they did in the two I have.  I don't know what happened there.  

Thanks, Mike. I want to believe believe. :

 

Edited March 13, 2018 by Casey

[Mark]

15 hours ago, pack rat said:

Th '63 Willard Battery Indy roadster had them (in "big and little" form) as well.

Believe it or not, the same tires also appeared in at least some (maybe all) of the 1968 Mustang Mach 1 concept kits; at least they did in the two I have.  I don't know what happened there.  

 

I'm pretty certain the first-issue Fireball 500 kits had the smaller tires too.  The short-run '63 Ford pickup reissue (the one with the goofy camper from the '69 Chevy pickup) had four of those tires too, not sure if they were the smaller or larger ones.

It's probably a case of, having tooled the tires, AMT had to include them in a certain number of kits to use up the production and justify the tooling costs.  When they cut a tire mold, they don't mold one tire at a time, or even four.  I've never seen a tire tool, but my guess is that it has cavities for about two dozen of the same tire. 

The oversize drag slicks in the Modified Stocker kits was probably another such case.  Those got used in some of the dragster kits, the early Seventies funny cars, the Boss Nova wagon, and the Modified Stockers.

 

[Art Anderson]

13 hours ago, Mark said:

I'm pretty certain the first-issue Fireball 500 kits had the smaller tires too.  The short-run '63 Ford pickup reissue (the one with the goofy camper from the '69 Chevy pickup) had four of those tires too, not sure if they were the smaller or larger ones.

It's probably a case of, having tooled the tires, AMT had to include them in a certain number of kits to use up the production and justify the tooling costs.  When they cut a tire mold, they don't mold one tire at a time, or even four.  I've never seen a tire tool, but my guess is that it has cavities for about two dozen of the same tire. 

The oversize drag slicks in the Modified Stocker kits was probably another such case.  Those got used in some of the dragster kits, the early Seventies funny cars, the Boss Nova wagon, and the Modified Stockers.

 

On one of my numerous visits to AMT Corporation (back when they were at 1220 Maple Road in Troy, MI) I got to witness the injection-molding processes, and the most fascinating molders at work were those making tires.  For starters, those mold bases were pretty much the same overall size as the ones used for injecting "ordinary" 1/25 scale model car kits in styrene:  In the case of tires, ordinary PVC tires  in 1:25 scale were molded 4-dozen (48) per mold cycle.  With tractor/trailer tires, given their larger diameter, that number was reduced to 36 tires per mold base.  In the case of the racing tires that are the subject of this thread, I'd guess (because I never got to see those tires in production) that each size tire had its own mold base, to cut down on what otherwise should have meant a fair amount of hand-work to separate out the two different size tires after molding.  This is because those AMT tire tools didn't have sprues in the ordinary sense of the word--when those tire molds opened up at the end of a cycle, the tires literally were popped out of the tooling very much as you'd have seen them in a kit, or in a parts-pack.  Also that would have meant that if say, a particular kit called for a set of 4 of the "front tire", someone would have had to pull out the front tires from a bin full of both sizes, and then what to do with the ones left over afterward?

 

[Casey]

14 hours ago, Mark said:

I'm pretty certain the first-issue Fireball 500 kits had the smaller tires too.

Looks like them in this original Fireball 500 kit:

 

[Casey]

Additional images and measurements for these AMT tires:

O.D. -- 1.328"

I.D. -- .614"

Width, sidewall-to-sidewall -- .425"

 

[Vince Nemanic]

Those tires were in the original issue of the Willard Battery Indy Roadster and also in the Bonneville-only issue of the '53 Studebaker (orange car on the box). At some time they were replaced by a two piece version. The two piece and solid ones might have also appeared in other kits that I don't know of.

[paul alflen]

Now correct me if  I'm wrong , but I think those were also in the AMT  1953 Studebaker "Salty Dog" Bonneville version one time?

[paul alflen]

If you look at those tires real close and  then look at one of those Goodyear, Firestone or Bridgestone ashtrays 1/1 scale, maybe they used the rubber tire ashtray for the 1/10 master to cast the tooling from?