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Thanks, Jeremy. That's kind of what I figured too. Although since I've sanded the tires, I'm assuming my warranty is out the window and now I'm stuck trying to find replacement fronts for this car.

Doggone it. :(

No, the reason is the little known "mozzarella factor". At a critical temperature, tires become pizza cheese. Science to the rescue. It must be true, I saw it on the Discovery/Learning/History Channel.

I keep a bottle of soapy water next to the Razor

you could do the super glue trick to the tires, just toss them in the freezer for a few that will help with the stickiness

This usually happens to me when I am using too much pressure. It increases the heat and you can literally cook the tires. I have since been forcing myself to be more patient and also using a finer grit sandpaper.

While the assembly is spinning, just dip your finger in some water and apply it by hand. It helps cool the surface.

Perform the sanding in shorter bursts. I do 5-10 seconds.

Just brush on a couple coats of Future. It does help reduce the traction up front on any brand tire.

Finally, after sanding roll the tires across masking tape. This is how I get rid of the "marbles" sometimes left behind on the tire.

Thanks for the info, Harry. It's possible that I was using too much pressure, although I don't recall doing anything differently than I have before. Most of the tires that I sand are Carrera since I only run digital these days, but I've done a few Paul Gage too. With the recent threads about old Carrera tires going gooey, and then having this happen on this re-release car, it got me wondering if something was going on with the tires themselves.

I'll try slowly sanding and applying a bit of water as I go and hopefully that sticky patch will disappear. If not, it's on to the Future I suppose.

sometimes I use lighter fluid instead of water, and it seems to work a little differently, especially on silicones and zero-grips (both of which I know these are not).
sometimes one of those fine sanding sponges will let me get a decent surface finish too.
-microwave 'em to finish curing, maybe? :lol:

If you look on here at past threads you will find that there have been issues with some of the Carrera tires. They have been known to melt while sitting in a display case. The tires on my Carrera Can-am cars turned to mush while just sitting. They actually stuck to the display case and then disintegrated on their own.

Carrera must have occasional problems with the formulation used to make their tires. There are a number of suppliers on here that have new tires for your car.

Ventura Alfa

Brushing two coats of Future on the sticky tires fixed the situation. Had these been rears, the car would not be driveable. I guess I lucked out with only having bad fronts.

And yes, I know that I can buy new tires for this car, but this isn't some new-old stock that had been sitting on the back of a shelf for years and had the tires turn to goo; this release is only one week old.

Hopefully Carrera is listening and cataloging all of these gooey/sticky tire reports so that they can alter their manufacturing to prevent it in the future. Given the amount of engineering that goes in to each car, I bet they are.

:!:
Oh- and as for brushing Future on tires, don't make the coats too heavy. I brushed them on heavy and put the axle in a set of helping-hands overnight so that they tires could dry, only to find bulges on the bottoms where the Future had run and dried. A very quick sanding with virtually no pressure on the Tire Razor remedied this, and the tires are nice and smooth.

I think this is the same rubber that even if left alone will end up in a pool of goo below the wheels or at least deform into a useless Flintstones tire.

My Future-coated fronts worked well on the track last night, but one of our racers discovered that one of the rears on his Ferrari 599XX developed the same problem that started this thread. He slightly sanded the tires and one of them revealed its gooey insides. So there's another tick in the "tires that have gone bad" column. I think Jeremy's theory of some of them not being fully cured is gaining traction.