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I got a set of Diamond backs made by Cooper more than satisfied so far. Randy Berger told me to check with Dale Mease of Mid Atlantic Packards his price delivered to my door was less than from Diamond back directly. My recomendation is where I put my money for my tires

Thanks. Diamondbacks have been where I'm leaning and will probably go if Kevin's contact at Discount can't offer a suggestion.

For all I know the tires he found in Arizona like so many other products the rest of the country can get but are illegal in California, have an upside down stamping or too much rubber or some other little thing equally stupid. That or more profit for the store is probably why the tire guy here reached for the Coker catalog.

Was hoping to find something available locally to avoid the cross country shipping and the mounting aggravation once they are here but starting to look like that won't happen.

I also buy my tires thru Dale Mease - gives a little markup to a Packard club and they are cheaper than you can order yourself.

HH56.
The modern day radials will damn near FALL off of or onto ANY wheel new or vintage, the steel stamped wheels anyway. The only thing u need is manual HAND operated bead breaker, 2wo tire irons and a 2 pound hammer.

It's not worth the trip to a tire shop to have the jon done. At least u won't find watches, tire stems, ciggareete butts, rings and water inside of the tire when it's done.

Mount dismount your own faster than a trip the tire store.

The old bias plys were difficult, VERY difficult to mount and demount. The modern day radials damned near fall off and on the rims now.

Probably even forget the hammer. The modern radials pry on and off REAL EZ!!!

Probably could manage it but with balancing etc will just find someplace to take them. Have almost finished finding things to mess with on the 56 so want to keep and transfer the old square sided bias tires to use as rollers for the 47. Who knows -- miracles can happen so ambition to work on that one might strike again.

My car came (to me) 3 years ago with Cokers. Scuttlebutt at the time was that they were trouble. I have driven about 9,000 miles on them and have no problems to report.

The ride on Radials is just awesome compared to belted....

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Howard, ironically I drove 20 miles to the nearest Discount Tire this past friday to have the Broadway Classic tires that were mounted on those ugly Blazer wheels tranferred over to my recently painted original Packard wheels. Then I find out that Discount has an expiration date on mounting tires over a certain age regardless of their condition. So for the heck of it we go inside and the salesman pulls the classic tire catalog out to get prices on some 3" wide whitewalls to replace the 1.6"s that I brought with me. He priced out 235/75R15 Diamondbacks at $239 each and then tells me they are Toyo tires with the whitewalls bonded to them. I've been using Discount for my modern car tires for about 8 years now but I won't use them for remounting or Classic tire purchasing and only went there because they will mount and balance tires on any car you own for free as long as you've purchased tires from them. Anyway, I left the Discount store and hooked up with the local independent, Clydes Tire and Alignment and he dismounted, mounted and balanced all 4 tires for $50.00. I installed them and drove the car Saturday and it was perfect. Have you checked out tires by American Classics? By the way, most independents have access to the same tires that the chains do and usually have the same catalogs.

Thanks and good info. Never thought about any mounting restrictions but with a rule on everything else, why not that too. I did look at the American Classics as they are also in the Coker catalog. Price was lower than DB and Goodrich but note said they were in short supply. I'll have to see if there is an independent shop on this side of town. Those I think of nearby are chains and Discount was just down the street.

Two reasons why I like American Classics is that they are made in the states and the whitewalls are molded into the tire instead of being bonded on. It is my understanding that bonded whitewalls typically require more weight to balance than molded whitewalls too. American Classics also recommends 35 P.S.I. tire pressure for their tires which of course helps with the steering effort on non-power steering cars.