or Headers on a C body.
Tires: How old is too old?
- Thread starter polarus
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fc7_plumcrazy
Old Man with a Hat
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tires...............
I have a set of Polyglas GT F60-15 from 1971. They were bolted of from a 1971 Charger RT when new (together with the Rallye wheels) and put in storage. I got them in 2001.
They just had a few miles on them, no cracks, seemd to have been always stored very dry.
Drove them in 2002 on my 70 Hemi Charger to the german Mopar Nats (just 20 miles away) with extrem caution.
What a ride. It worked out but of course the tries were the worst I ever drove, totally hard as a rock.
It has to drive with Repros since, originals are stored safe again
I have different old tires on some of my cars. My 69 300 still has "snowtrekker" rear tires dated 1988.
Those look excellent till today and have held more than 20.000 miles. Best tires for driving in the rain.
I drive a lot of bias ply tires. They work well for me till they start drying out and get hard. From my experiance I notice this around the ten year mark no matter how much mileage they got. After 15 years all of them are pretty hard. My oldest sets still installed are being from 1985, 1988, 1995. The 1988 tires are tread worn, too and will be replaced now. The 1985 redlines get mostly driven locally as I don't want to take those on long autobahn trips anymore.
Till today NEVER any of the bias ply tires gave my any kind of trouble. And they are my most often used tire.
Radials are a different story. I had a tire blow up (8 year old whiteline tire out of nothing on the autobahn).
I had five radial tires that died due to bulge going outside (BF goodrich, Cooper Cobra and Coker whitewall tires).
@Will: I know what you meant with your spare, when the Coker whitewall died on my 61 300 G back in 2006 I had to install the original Goodyear Futurama spare tire from the trunk which has never seen the road in 45 years. It happened in Belgium and it drove me home safe going from Belgium over Netherlands to germany, in total a little bit more than 100 miles. But the tire was always in the trunk and not outside like on your truck
Carsten
I have a set of Polyglas GT F60-15 from 1971. They were bolted of from a 1971 Charger RT when new (together with the Rallye wheels) and put in storage. I got them in 2001.
They just had a few miles on them, no cracks, seemd to have been always stored very dry.
Drove them in 2002 on my 70 Hemi Charger to the german Mopar Nats (just 20 miles away) with extrem caution.
What a ride. It worked out but of course the tries were the worst I ever drove, totally hard as a rock.
It has to drive with Repros since, originals are stored safe again
I have different old tires on some of my cars. My 69 300 still has "snowtrekker" rear tires dated 1988.
Those look excellent till today and have held more than 20.000 miles. Best tires for driving in the rain.
I drive a lot of bias ply tires. They work well for me till they start drying out and get hard. From my experiance I notice this around the ten year mark no matter how much mileage they got. After 15 years all of them are pretty hard. My oldest sets still installed are being from 1985, 1988, 1995. The 1988 tires are tread worn, too and will be replaced now. The 1985 redlines get mostly driven locally as I don't want to take those on long autobahn trips anymore.
Till today NEVER any of the bias ply tires gave my any kind of trouble. And they are my most often used tire.
Radials are a different story. I had a tire blow up (8 year old whiteline tire out of nothing on the autobahn).
I had five radial tires that died due to bulge going outside (BF goodrich, Cooper Cobra and Coker whitewall tires).
@Will: I know what you meant with your spare, when the Coker whitewall died on my 61 300 G back in 2006 I had to install the original Goodyear Futurama spare tire from the trunk which has never seen the road in 45 years. It happened in Belgium and it drove me home safe going from Belgium over Netherlands to germany, in total a little bit more than 100 miles. But the tire was always in the trunk and not outside like on your truck
Carsten
Got biased ply tires stored since early 80's, had one that had tread separation/shifting, was a pain in the ***. Looked great, supple, but was crap. Got one more set stashed, after that it'll be radicals. And 15" rims.
70bigblockdodge
Old Man with a Hat
I really don't believe bias will last longer than a radial. Most casing failures are from defects, created by the manufacture, leaving voids in rubber that holds a air pocket that expands under heat and creates more separation, in a steel belted radial this creates rust on the cords and in this case a bias will resist this better (panty hose do not rust). Same scenarios for you cutting a tire if water gets into the steel over time it will rust and fail. Bias/nylon tires don't rust but you need more layers over using steel, more layers creates more heat which the nylon has more of a problem with, panty hose melt long before steel.
polara71
Old Man with a Hat
patrick66
Old Man with a Hat
Actually, you can to a point. By keeping the vehicle INSIDE where sunshine can not hit the rubber.OR like the RV guys do, put tire covers over the entire tire, that helps greatly. Direct sunshine on rubber is what causes the ozone damage
68plymouth383
Senior Member
So we can talk about the planet, the ozone, and global warming.... Just no politics, religion ect......
bluefury361
Old Man with a Hat
Not exactly true. The Ford SUV's in question were not exactly stable vehicles in the best of circumstances, with a very high center of gravity
Add to that the low FoMoCo recommended tire pressure, (which softened the ride quality of the vehicle so the soccer moms could make phone calls at 75 MPH).
The result was overheated tires on unstable vehicles with low performance drivers. A perfect storm situation.
Can't lay that one on just the tires.
patrick66
Old Man with a Hat
^^^Ford screwed the pooch on that one, no doubt. If the tires were inflated to Firestone's recommendations and not the Ford door sticker (32 vs 22 psi!), they'd had little problems with that tire/vehicle combo.
68plymouth383
Senior Member
Yeah and would have avoided many law suits in the process.
Just glad you fixed it before Stan did.
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