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Just wanted a few opinions on the look of my car with the 1.6" whitewalls mounted on a set of original Packard wheels. The car would have come from the factory with slightly smaller diameter bias ply tires and 2.5" wide whitewalls but since these 1.6" were on it when I bought it and they have virtually no obvious wear I could not see spending $239 each for new ones.

I also picked up my radiator from the shop today and it's ready to go except for filling a few small dings and painting. The Radiator shop removed the top tank, rodded out and cleaned the core, straigtened the tank dents and then reinstalled it plus resoldered the bottom tank to the frame all for $85.00 which is like about what I paid in 1970's. They also resoldered the area around the drain cock and the neck and re-attached the overflow tube. The workmanship looks as good as what the factory would have done.

Well, I can't get the photo to post, only the link.

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You could always have someone grind down your current side walls, which will usually about double the width of the white showing. It's something the rat rod crowd does all the time:

youtube.com/watch?v=pHWTa2tAYIc

youtube.com/watch?v=JnwevOfIUqA&feature=fvwp

I was in the same situation, with a good set of modern, thin white wall tires. I had it done to my Packard and they look pretty good. From about 8 feet you can't even tell. My friend actually has a machine in his shop made just for grinding white walls, so it was alot easier to do than using a angle grinder.

This will hold me over until I replace them in a couple of years with something like this:

Coker Classic 4 7/16" wide whites

cokertire.com/lowrider/h78-15-coker-classic-3-whitewall-tire-3290.html

I would say your car looks great! And I would rotate those tires to get the most wear out of them.

Thanks Randy and for sure on the rotations. That's one reason why I buy my modern car tires at Discount Tire because of their balance and rotation program. I'll most likely try to rotate them myself on the Packard unless I remove the wheel covers before I take it in.

Mtpackard, those are some nice looking Cokers for sure and just about 90% of the sidewall is white! I would be a little leery of grinding down my sidewalls for fear of weakening them. The whitewalls on my tires are molded into the rubber and are raised about 1/16" above the rest of the sidewall therefore it would take a lot of grinding to level it all out.

If you paint the radiator, be sure to use a radiator paint. It is much thinner than the normal rattle can paint and doesn't restrict heat transfer. I don't know how much this affects the operation, but it is what the radiator shops use.

Gator, I hadn't taken notice before, but that's a very nice and attractive Packard with colors very much to my liking. Yeah, the whitewalls look a little out of place. Were it mine I'd probably flip the tires, blackwall side out, and get some life from them until it was time to re-tire.

Dave Grubbs make an important point about radiator paint, Eastwood has the low-solids black radiator paint if you can't find it elsewhere.

I guess it's just me, but I kind of like the narrower white wall. Looks sportier to me.