Old Tires

[John Palmer]

I'm not a tire engineer, but I've made a few observations over the years.

On racing tires they seem to get very hard from heat cycling.  On our drag race car we replaced our slicks every other year.  They never were worn out, but our sixty foot times would fall off drastically.  Our "happy number" was a 1.50 sixty foot at 12# of air, as soon as that number started to increase on a regular basis we replaced the tires.  At least we never had a racing tire separate the tread.  We were always happy with M&H slicks.

On my trailer tires, I try to protect them with a sheet of plywood from the sun rays while in storage, and always replace them at 5 years maximum. 

A good friend recently flew back to New York (from California) to visit his mother.  While there, he checked the local Craigslist and ended up buying a very nice "all original" 1967 LTD four door hard top.  He was told the car originally came from Arizona and it was always garaged in New York.  Not a speck of rust.  So he buys it and takes it to the local shop for an oil change and general check up.  When he picked it up they told him the car looked great, but cautioned him about the "new looking" tires that had a date of manufacture showing they were "29 years old".  You guessed it.........he just said OK, I'll keep an eye on them.........then left for California on the interstates at 70 MPH, for 3000 miles, all the way back home.  Tell me that there's not a higher power looking over people.  None of us would be THAT LUCKY!   

[hiball3985]

Two days ago a friend tore up the right front fender on his beautiful 1964 GTO when the 10 year old low mileage tire blew 

[Jeff Norwell]

25 years ago I had a 34 3 winder.a local guy had just bought a cherry stock 50 Merc and he sold me the rims,caps and tires for cheap..I really only wanted the rims and Merc caps....That day I threw them on to the coupe and went to a local show.I parked next to a BFG display and went for a stroll....when I came back,... the crew from BFG were all gathered around the front tires looking.....they asked where I got the BFG Silvertowns....I told them the story and they were astonished that they were original date coded from 1950!.... the tires were horrible, rock hard and drove terrible......  I went back to my original look that later afternoon.

[Ecode70D]

Jeff
    Never mid the tires....Where is that car now???

[Jeff Norwell]

The 34 now resides in Virginia Jay.

[JPotter57]

Jeff, that 3 window is my idea of the perfect hot rod, the Torq Thrust version.  Never really been one for whitewalls, but they do look cool on certain period correct vehicles.  The stance of the 2nd pic just turn my crank, man, seriously.

[lalessi1]

Ditto!!! That car belongs in the dictionary as a definition of "hot rod".