[DjScribbles]

We setup a curved piece of flatstock as a backing on our shooter (and posts of 80/20 that the flatstock is secured against), then added plastic (not sure what material, it's the milky white stuff) in layers with double sided tape until we got the shot/compression we liked (this also covered up the fasteners inside the curve).

For the wheel, unfortunately, curved shooters are very difficult to swap wheels out in because the curve is (or should be) fit to the wheel, if you go bigger or smaller, your compression won't be consistent throughout the curve, even if you move the wheel (you can make it work at the middle, but the ends won't have good contact and you end up having a shorter contact distance even with a larger wheel).

We use a metallic wheel (apparantly it's no longer available, but it was in the kit 3 or 4 years ago), with waffle tread (light brown rubbery waffle material). I think the wheel is 6-8", but I'm not sure. We direct drive the wheel with a standard CIM motor.


I don't think you want to gear the wheel up for higher rpm (unless your chain drive already gears it down), we've found the sim RPM at direct drive to work very well with the right compression and wheel grip.


As a side note, balancing a pneumatic wheel wouldn't really effect whether it "comes apart", since it's the RPM pulling the tread off the wheel that would cause that; balancing makes it much less scary though. I've not heard anybody say they've actually had the pneumatic wheels come apart since early on, but they aren't designed for the RPM teams are using them at.
I would try working with your compression before you try changing wheels. Changing wheels means changing the curve, so it's a bit more work.