Check Your Tires

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Alan H. Tast
Posts: 4214
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2003 10:52 pm
Location: Omaha, NE

Check Your Tires

Post by Alan H. Tast »

This is a friendly reminder to people with tires more than 6-years old: Change them out! This is what happened to me this afternoon coming home from a show 20 miles away. The tread separated and flew off the tire about 5 miles from home, but thankfully the tire didn't blow out and there's no apparent damage to the underside of the car. The tires are at least 15 - and probably close to 20 years old and looked ok - no cracks in the tread or sidewalls.

And now the search is on for a competent shop in the Omaha-Lincoln area which is willing to order, remove and install new tires and tubes on Kelsey-Hayes 48-spoke wire wheels. I will not be driving the car to Tulsa in July now :sad:
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Alan H. Tast, AIA
Technical Director/Past President,
Vintage Thunderbird Club Int'l.
Author, "Thunderbird 1955-1966" & "Thunderbird 50 Years"
1963 Hardtop & 1963 Sports Roadster
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mnpetri
Posts: 213
Joined: Wed Feb 28, 2007 1:55 pm
Location: Southern NJ

Re: Check Your Tires

Post by mnpetri »

Good point Alan.
Also glad that the car was not damaged.
I had a vibration in mine on a ride last fall, thought that maybe I had a flat spot - it seemed to get a little better after I drove it a distance.
HOWEVER, when I replaced the tires this spring (the old ones were a little over 10 years old), the guys at the tire shop pointed out that one tire had a "belt shift"... it would have probably come apart very soon.
I later discovered that the date codes on those tires were considerably older than when I bought them - check your date codes and the guidelines!
I had a tire come apart on me before I bought the previous set - very scary. They were old/from the previous owner.

I have also wondered if the fact that we have (at least in the case of the Bullet- and Flair-Birds) nearly 5000# cars riding on skinny 14" and 15" tires makes failure more likely (less extra load capacity). I noticed that our daughter's base-level '08 Pontiac G6 came with 16" tires (that is a mid-size car, about 3300 lbs)
Mark
VTCI # 11024
65 Special Landau #1485
66 Sunbeam Tiger
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