Paul Gage Urethane Tires

Here at TooBad Motorplex we have been installing Paul Gage urethane tires on most all of our cars. These tires seem to work very well in all conditions and temperatures. They give excellent traction and wear does not seem to be an issue even on the fairly rough TooBad track surface. One question that did come up concerned the longevity of the tires in regards to shelf life or, will they deteriorate or breakdown over time?

  Gary Goose Gosset posed that question to Paul Gage in an email, and here's the response he received from Paul:

Hi Guys, I still have the first batch of 8 year old tires I made. Bags and bags over the years, on 500 cars of my own, in boxes, out of boxes, in the deep freezer, in the desert sun. The only time I have found any decay is when the XPG's were glued on the rim with too much glue. This is with either the CA (Crazy Glue types)or Methacrylates (Nail polish) as adhesives. They soften and turn yellow, and it's only rarely, so I cannot eliminate that it was an ingredients or production issue. I have a Slot.it 962 with 8 year old XPG's glued on, ran it the other day. For anything other than a race unit I no longer glue them on, and I use the Soft (A40) tires. I use the Soft on all my shelf queens, some are in the box some in the open no problems.

My buddy Dave has his track in his heated uninsulated garage. It gets to 40 below here so when its 5 or 10 below we've popped out to the garage and run a few laps without turning on the heaters. I wish my 1:1 car's tires would be that soft at 40 below!

To this day I still come across local cars that had urethanes on them from years before they were introduced to me. From all the research I have done on the local slot car history I estimate they were making urethane here as early as '98 or '99.

Like I said the only bad tires were directly linked to me going crazy with the glue! But worry not, I'll be around for a while, you can get more! I'm also in the process of searching for an apprentice to take over when all I want to do is play with slot cars or hunt 50" musky!

The XPG casts into a mean 1/2 lb Bull Dog, if you do any fishing, tougher than the originals!