Thursday Testimonials: Pro-Line F-11 Bead-Loc SC wheels

 

 
 

Whether you are a backyard basher or a fulltime racer, one of the most expensive aspects of R/C racing is wheels and tires. This doesn't include the hours of your life spent gluing and re-gluing tires to the rims...time that you can never get back or enjoy. Pro-Line has introduced their all-new F-11 Bead-Loc Wheels to fit most popular short course trucks on the market. These unique wheels feature an actual working bead-loc design, which means no more gluing! When your tires wear out or it's time to change your foams, simply unscrew the bead-loc and the tire comes right off. In theory you could have one set of F-11 wheels for 1,000,000 different tires (assuming at some point you don't break or damage the wheels). 

  

 

Pro-Line provided us with the new "Trencher" SC tire to bolt on and try these out. These tires feature an aggressive tread pattern that is designed to handle almost any terrain. With that being said, we put F-11 Bead-Loc Wheels and Trenchers to the test in any and all terrain we could find including dirt, grass, gravel, asphalt, concrete, and sand (until the high school volleyball team kicked us off the court).

 

We decided to test these out on our race vehicles first, but the real test came when we strapped them on to the powerhouse of the LiveRC testing vehicle fleet...the Vaterra Glamis Uno!
 

 
 

One of our biggest concerns with a bead-loc wheel/tire combo, as opposed to standard glued wheel/tire combo, is the threat of the tire spinning on the rim. Where it is 99.9% impossible for a tire that is glued to a rim to spin on the rim, the chances with a bead-loc design are much greater. In order to test how well the F-11's really hold up we marked a line on the wheel and tire before and after our day long bash session.
 

   
(Before and After)

    

As you can see, the F-11 Bead-Loc Wheels held up like a champ! The tire didn't move even a millimeter on the rim, and the red bead-loc held up to the abuse of even the gravel parking lot next door. The Trencher tires hooked up and had us popping wheels on the asphalt, and throwing a roost of sand on the volleyball court. 

 

For this particular item we are going to award it two different beacon ratings. The first is for bashers/part-time racers. If you are a basher and/or part-time racer these wheels are dynamo! Assuming you have a paint job that will work with red bead-loc's, there is virtually no real downside to these rims. They do cost more than traditional glue up wheels, however, if you take care of them, they can be used over, and over, and over. The second beacon rating is for full-time racers. If you are a full-time racer you should know that these wheels are significantly heavier than standard wheels. Is the weight enough to make a difference in your driving? If running a stock class of some sort, probably so. In a mod class, probably not as much. With a 4wd SC, probably very little. Ultimately whether it helps or hinders your personal driving style is for you to decide. In our opinion, when racing it is important to be as light as possible, therefore as much as we hate gluing tires, in MOST (but NOT all) cases we would stick with a standard glue up wheel.

 

                                               

 

 

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