Hey Drifters, I finally got ONE of my tires to work with the wheels I got from eBay. It turns out that the wheels have a slightly narrower width than the HPI drift tires, plus the HPI drift tires had a very small lip inside them that was making all attempts at freezing and heating moot. Nothing a Dremel couldn't handle. I ground the inside of a one HPI drift tire and was able to get the tire onto the wheel. I've only modified one so far as I didn't want to ruin a whole set of tires in case grinding them also wouldn't work. I think I will still need to glue the tires to the wheels but it looks like this is going to work. Here is a photo of the sample tire and wheel I ground.
I almost have the tires and wheels ready now, but my chassis doesn't have a motor, ESC or servo yet. Here's how it looks right now:
