@Ross C, thankyou for the extra info. This helps a lot as I just discovered that Latatoy is using spheres for his wheels in conjunction with the JV-ODE physics library, which was posing some extra questions about whether I should continue to use a cylinder for the wheels or a eliptical (squished) sphere, which really is what a 'true' wheel is. I will use a cylinder in the first instance to improve my 3d texturing skills associated with UU3D, then consider addressing using spheres for wheels as opposed to cylinders to combat the potential skipping problem.