Mayhem Engineering offers a full line of 2.2 and 1.9 sized beadlocks for RC Crawling. I purchased these 1.9 wheels for use on my FJ scale rig. Mayhem released these wheels with 16-2mm screws on the front and back side of each wheel (that’s 160 screws in my case!). I purchased 5 wheels from Mayhem so that I could mount one on my rear spare tire carrier. All of Mayhem Engineering’s beadlocks use a ring with a lip around the outside perimeter to aid in keeping the bead secured. I chose to get a black anodized wheel with natural finish rings.The anodizing looked great with no imperfections that I could find. Mayhem offers a large assortment of different ring styles to choose from, the set I picked here are designed to look like the Poison Spyder beadlocks that are available for full size off-road vehicles.

Mounting:

I was using a set of RC4WD 1.9 Rock Crusher tires mounted on the FJ already so I decided to just swap the wheels onto those tires. Mounting the tires was quite the task, but not because it was hard to seat the bead. It was just very time consuming to tighten all 32 screws per wheel, but that is the price you have to pay for a scale appearance. Since the wheels use 2mm hardware you have to be extra careful to not try and over-tighten the screws. It is very important to tighten all of the screws down evenly and in a star pattern so that you don’t put too much pressure on any individual screw because they WILL strip if not done properly. After it was all said and done I did have a few threads that did let loose on me, but a small dab of blue Loctite held them in just fine. Adding a small (VERY SMALL) amount of Loctite to each screw would have been a better idea in hindsight. The Rock Crushers mounted the total track width once installed on Axial axles comes out to be 9.45"

Performance:

Once the task of mounting the tires was all finished up I put the wheels on the FJ and hit the rocks. These wheels first test was in Moab, Utah at the 2008 USRCCA Nationals. While the comp rigs are the focus of the event, running the scalers around with everyone is just as much if not more fun than actually competing. The rims held great, never slipping a bead on the high traction surface. Not much more you can ask from a beadlock. I would definitely buy these wheels again.