• About Gecko Tyres

Technical

    

Gecko® Foam Rubber Tyres – an innovative new tyre technology

 

Some history

Adams Racing limited (ARL) have developed a new way of producing foam rubber tyres. In 2004 ARL won an R&D grant from the DTI to help start the research and development and set up a small laboratory and used some key equipment including an MDR foam rubber analyser and self designed/locally made jigs to measure grip, tyre wear & heat build up. ARL now have commercially available a range of foam rubber donuts for use in various RC car tyres with a specialisation in RC oval racing.  

                                                                                                       

  Why are Gecko® tyres different?

Using an innovative ‘individual’ moulding process for the unique ‘in house’ rubber compounds produces consistent physical properties all around the tyre (hardness, cell structure, tensile etc…) which results in the notable high grip, good wear & chunk resistance of the Gecko® foam rubber tyre.  

The high grip Gecko® foam rubber tyre enables you to take a tighter line around the bends, gripping with minimal slide, allowing the power to go on even sooner out of the bend.

The Gecko® foam rubber tyre exhibit a consistent hardness across the width and around the circumference so optimising rubber in the contact patch. A criticism of conventional ‘laminated sheet’ foam tyres is that you do get a variation in the hardness across the tread width which means variation in density/weight and so, due to centrifugal forces, this will give an uneven contact patch profile at high rpm.

Gecko® wheels

ARL have developed wheels of different stiffness to suit application. Stiff wheels are used for the 1/10^th electric touring cars where maximum grip & stability is required. All the deformation is in the rubber and not the wheel which means more rubber heat build up which means more grip. 

Quality assured packaging

Gecko® foam rubber tyre products are packaged in sealed PE bags to maintain the freshness of the compounds up until purchase. This is important as RC tyre compounds will gradually lose oils and other materials through evaporation over a few months and so their grip & wear properties can deteriorate e.g. this will happen if stored in cardboard box packaging.