Packard Forum Index » General

Four contact patches about the size of your hand determine if your car goes, steers or stops. This group is into the engineering of torsion suspension, air conditioning, engine heads, but "tires are all the same"?????????

Given how most old cars are driven, it's not that critical between decent designs because we are stressing the design so little. But especially in your Brand X, it's a big deal for safety and performance. Tread design , compound, tradeoffs (wet vs dry grip, grip vs wear, handling vs ride) matter a lot.

That said. You're still only as safe as you drive. I believe you can drive an "unsafe" car, safely, just as easily as you can drive a safe car, unsafely.

Exactly, West, just as a great machinist can make parts to spec on a lousy, tired old lathe and a hack can't on a brand new, state-of-the-art lathe.

Well spoken West and Mr Pushbutton!!! Most people owning vintage automobiles are usualy astute enuf to know and act as both of u have indicated.

Much of recent hype over the last 5 to 10 years about safety and so-called 'proper maintenance by so-called professionals' has become nearly absurd.

Any day now i expect to open up a roll of toilet tissue only to find that a pair of safety glasses have fallen out of the package along with proper instructions for use and a privacy notice. And probably an expiration date stamped on the roll of toilet tissue.

It's all designed to do one thing, exactly one thing and only one thing. Get in everyones wallet.

I'm not one taken to philosophising on these pages, but as long as we've gone a bit off topic, my own opinion, having spent many years in health and safety within the chemical industry, is that most safety warnings for consumer products are not written by safety professionals at all. They are primarily written by product liability lawyers seeking to protect their clients from law suits, especially the frivolous kind.

Remember the woman who successfully sued a fast-food company because her coffee was too hot and she burned herself? There are too many in our society who just look to sue (and often win) and supplement their income rather than just take responsibility for their own actions.

There is a company that makes swimming pool chemicals and advertised that their chemicals made the water crystal-clear. So when some probably drunken jackass jumped into an empty pool and became a quadriplegic, he sued, saying the thought the pool was full of water treated by that company's chemicals. The shame of it is that he collected.

So someday some equally dumb jerk will try to eat a roll of toilet paper and choke to death, and his heirs will sue because the package didn't say "not for internal consumption". Sad, but that's the way society has become.

And even sadder to say it won't change as long as the lawyers who take these cases and get paid the way they do, have no incentive to think twice. Thought there was a glimmer of hope when I read a judge, after he threw a lawyers umpteenth case out, got tired of the frivolous actions and directed he pay all the defendants costs and court costs personally -- but was apparently just a whim of the moment as it didn't start a fad--and apparently the lawyer is still at it. There is another rub--judges who complain about clogged calendars and overwork, tell the lawyer his case is without merit and let it proceed anyway.

As if product liability isn't enough, another thing going on locally causing quite an uproar is because of an out of town firm going around suing mom & pop stores or small businesses for ADA violations--one mentioned in the paper was a bathroom mirror out of position 1 inch. Business settles, lawyer gets his fee and goes on the next victim.

Another consideration: I'd be willing to bet that most Deluxe Clippers ala Amanda's car, and mine, most likely came with blackwall, not whitewall, tires. I believe that period photos will bear out the fact that a much higher % of cars had blackwalls at that time than you will see on vintage cars today. Whitewalls were optional, and much less likely to be ordered on a cost conscious car like a Deluxe, so a desire for real originality would take that fact into account. Of course only with the dealer invoice would you know for sure.

Although radials offer a generally (if sometimes marginally) better ride, better stopping ability, last longer under constant use than bias-ply tires and tend not to track road irregularities as readily the disparity, under most normal driving conditions and with properly maintained suspension and steering, are too slight to tell the difference. Too, the sidewalls of the radial are the weakest points in the construction of the tire. This is inherent in the radial design because the radial belts do not extend all the way to the inside mounting rim of the tire as they do in the bias-ply design. Modern materials and manufacturing techniques have eliminated this weakness to some degree but I will not mount a radial tire with less than an "H" rating on any of my vehicles for this reason.

The principal reason that we have radial tires, today, is that they're cheaper to manufacture than bias-ply tires.

I, too, have had bad experience with some modern repop bias-ply tires having bought a set from one of the most widely advertised sources for my Patrician. They were the proper wide whitewalls and looked great but they were so out of round that they couldn't be balanced. Upon taking them to my old tire guy to be trued (shaved), he advised me that the tread depth was so shallow that he'd rather not true them and wouldn't run them on his own vehicle after he did. As it turned out a friend with a mid-fifties Cadillac show car that is only driven on and off the trailer bought them from me, knowing that they weren't round and not caring one way or the other.

On the whole, I'd rather run bias-plies if I could be assured of their quality than I had radials but, in today's circumstances, generally run "H" rated radials on the Lincoln and the Packard as I drive both extensively.

Flat spots on bias-ply tires are generally caused by their having belts made of fibreglass or some other synthetic material rather than natural fibres. Most times the flat spots will work themselves out when the tire heats up. Sometimes, particularly when a vehicle sits for extended periods of time through cycles of temperature changes, they will become permanent. Back in 'the day' when all tires were made with cotton belts, flat spots were never a problem but, then, cotton belts won't take the punishment that modern synthetic materials will. It's a trade off.

On the whole I agree with PackardV8. Most of the tires made, worldwide, today come from the same seven or eight manufacturers and are made to pretty much uniform standards being simply 'branded' for whatever markets they're going to. As long as I can find correctly rated radial tires for the vehicles I have and the service I intend to put them to, I buy the cheapest ones that I can find that are closest to the OEM height and width. This is my practise for my 'drivers.' If I showed any cars and was likely to loose points in judging, I'd probably take a different tack.

Randserson- that is a good point it is possible that originally my car had black walls instead of whitewalls but I have no real way of knowing. I personally like the whitewall look much better and that is what it had on it when I bought it. It may not be 'original' but it's original to the way that I purchased it. But you are probably right for the majority of Deluxe's having black walls.
I do want to stay as close to the side of originality as possible even though the extent of "showing" will be parking in the grass at local rallies. But with the exception of the fuel pump there's nothing that has been done on the car that prevents it from returning to it's 'original state' in 20 minutes time. Yes, it's fair to say that already the car isn't original because of the fuel pump but if I had the original one it would be wearing it.
I'm sure there may come a day where bias ply may not even be available anymore (or incredibly expensive)as radials have become such a trend. In the mean time I'd like to take advantage of maintaining the look I have always known it to have.
Talking about originality I wonder if it did come with black wall tires would it still have come with radials or would they have been black wall bias ply?