Not long ago I took possession of a DuraTrax Nitro Quake. One of the things I noticed was there were no foam inserts in the huge Quake tires. Since we all know that not having foam inserts can cause the tire to collapse and roll-over in the corners I figured I'd see if adding some inserts would help. Problem was, I couldn't find any of the right size readily available. Guess it was time to figure out how to make some.

I looked at a number of sources and couldn't find round foam rubber in the size I needed, so I ended up at the local craft shop and picked up a 6 foot by 2 foot piece of 2" foam rubber for about ten bucks.

I laid the foam out on the kitchen table and looked around to find a coffee can gave me the 6 1/2 inch diameter I needed.

Using a Sharpie, I drew a circle around the can to help guide me as I cut it out.

Using a knife I roughed out the shape I needed. What I found was that the foam was so thick that it was hard to cut out with a regular knife of any kind.

What worked perfect for cutting the foam was an electric carving knife. It sliced through the foam better then the Christmas ham but I'm sure it wouldn't taste as good.

It took a little practice to get the cuts so the edges were square to the sidewalls but after screwing up a few of them I was able to cut 8 of them without problems.

Once I got 8 pieces cut out I used some "craft glue" that comes in a spray can to glue two inserts together to get a 4 inch width. The resulting 6 1/2" x 4" foam donut was exactly the size I needed to fit into the tires perfectly. I then took the same electric knife and cut out the inner hole that I had marked using a drinking cup.

I made sure that I opened up the holes in the Nitro Quake's rims to make sure the tires were vented properly.

As you can see, the inserts fit very nicely in the Quake's tires. The tires were then mounted on the rims with Super Glue and we put them back on the NQ.

After running the Nitro Quake a few times with the new inserts I'm not sure there is much improvement. It did help keep the sidewalls from rolling-over in high speed corners although it did not stop it completely. The extra weight from the foams and the extra stiffness seems to make it bounce more on choppy ground and after landing off a jump. Sometimes you can improve one thing and it hurts something else and inserting foams in your Quake may or may not give you the results you want.

This same procedure of making foams could be used for any car or truck if you can not find the size of foam inserts that you are looking for. Besides, it great knowing you did something yourself, saved a little money and learned something in the process.

End of article. Your comments are welcome.