Tutorial: Johnny Lightning Wheel Swap - part one

The one thing that has really appealed to me about Johnny Lightning cars and trucks is the fact that they come in a variety of tire and wheel combinations.  There are so many different style of mag wheels, hub caps, wheel covers that it's hard to keep track of them all.  Sometimes a vehicle will have plastic tires and other times it will have rubber tires.  In some cases, there have actually been cars and trucks that had both plastic and rubber tires.  And yet, even still sometimes I'm not completely happy with the wheel choices that come on a car.

Take for instance this beautiful silver Ford Country Squire station wagon from the current Forever 64 release 27.  It originally comes with rubber whitewalls and hubcaps, but I just find that this combination doesn't work on this car.  I wanted to kick it up but not make it look too racy either.

For rubber tired Johnny Lightnings, it is so easy to change up the wheels.  Simply peel off the tire from the hub.  The rims will come off at the same time.  Easy peasy.  Now keep in mind that I've been collecting Johnny Lightnings for more than ten years so I've amassed quite a few wheels and tires over the past year, but if you've got a handful of rubber tired Johnny Lightnings, you could do a wheel exchange between one car and another to practice.

I use pill containers to separate out all my different rims and tires, so I can easily differentiate the ones I want to use.  Here, I've decided to go with a nice wire rim.  I've run out of skinny blackwall rubber tires so I decided I would just flip the whitewalls inside out and reuse them with the new rims.  It's very easy to pop the rims out from the tires after you have removed them from the car.  And simply, push the new rim into the tire and make sure it is aligned properly.  I definitely recommend that you put the rims into the tires before remounting the tires on the car, much like in real life.  After you have installed the rims into the tires, now you can press the the rim/tire back onto the hub.  Make sure you have seated the tire properly and give it a spin to make sure it's true.  Now, repeat the same process for the remainign wheels and you have successfully performed your wheel swap.

In part two, I'll post the tutorial on what you'll need to change the rims on a plastic wheeled Johnny Lightning.
Stay tuned and thanks for looking!

Addendum:  Here's part two - plastic wheel swap for Johnny Lightning.