Old tires

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

>>> ANOTHER TRUE STORY <<<

This guy and his family were asleep inside their nice home with two-car garage.

While visions of sugar-plums and IRS auditors danced through their heads, about a quarter of one A.M., they were all shockingly awakened by this big

BOOOOMMMMM!!!!​

It shook the house and rattled the windows.

The guy's wife told me that she thought either an airplane or some cell-phone user had crashed into their house.


A quick investigation didn't show anything drastic; no big hole through the roof; no bedroom wall knocked off the foundation.

One by one, all the lights in the neighborhood were coming on.

Phones were ringing; "What was that ??"; " Did you hear that ??"; " Where did it come from ??"


A closer investigation revealed that the brand-new never-used seven-year-old rear-mounted spare, hanging on the back door of the garage-parked van, had exploded, throwing the entire tread completely off and destroying the chrome-ringed fiber-glass cover.



Growing up in a tire-shop, I have about seen and heard it all when it comes to tire stories.

 

[Agnem]

Radial.

 

[snicklas]

I had the same thing happen on a van. I had a fairly well used Comanche 31x10.50r15 tire and steel rim mounted on the door-mounted tire carrier. This tire had been on our F-150, and then moved to the E-150 van, and was the "best tire left" when we replaced the tires on the van. I was hung on the back door as the spare. I had heard a loud boom, much like a gunshot. I looked in the rear-view mirror and the tire had a large hole in the sidewall and the tread was caved-in.... This was on the inside top of the tire, so it was easy to see out the window.

We had put the Comanche tires on the van after we had "had enought" with the, in my personal opinion, the worst tires I have ever dealt with, a set of 235x75r15 Firestone Supreme radial. I do not have a problem with Firerock tires (I actually have a set of Transforce AT's on the Ex that I really like)..... I just HATE this model tire. I popped the sidewall on 2..... yes 2 of the Supremes on the van turning into a parking spot, the sidewalls were so soft the rollover caused by the weight of the van, if there was any imperfection in the road surface it would puncture the sidewall.... The Shadow that we had, had Firestone Supremes on it, and even on that small of a car, they sucked just as bad. That set did not like to keep air in them..... and they were just as soft as the ones on the van had been......

 

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

Radial.

Were they BIAS, I would roll on and not worry about them.

You will probably be okay even with the radials, seeing as they are LT truck tires instead of P- passenger tires, but the likelihood of imminent failure is there.

Just keep the spare tires handy and enough extra cash in hand to replace a tire on the road.

Trouble is, you are going to find the immediate availability of 16.5 tires to be little if any to choose from.

Myself, I would have some 16" spares, size 255-85-16, which should match in height the 12.50-33-16.5s; thus, you would not be forced to waste money on yet more 16.5s.

 

[IDIDieselJohn]

What's the deal with those 16.5" rims? I don't think i've ever seen an F-series with those. Or maybe I did and didn't notice?

Were they some kind of special edition or what?

 

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

What's the deal with those 16.5" rims? I don't think i've ever seen an F-series with those. Or maybe I did and didn't notice?

Were they some kind of special edition or what?

Way back in the early 70s, GM came out with 16.5 rims on their "camper special" pick-ups; the one's with the extra 9-inch section made into the bed-front, purpose-built for hauling big slide-in campers.

Then Dodge started offering them.

You did see the occassional new SRW Ford with them, but curiously enough, Ford used them more often on many of their DRW trucks.

By the mid-80s, it was rare to see any of the big three come factory-original with 16.5s.

The advent of GMs first "duallies" in 1973, soon followed by Dodge and then Ford, done away with any need, real or imagined, for the low-profile/wide-face 16.5s.

I have a 1972 Ford DRW right now that is sitting on six DRW 16.5 factory Ford wheels/tires; I also have six hub-pilot 16-inchers that are going on it before I get it ready for the road.

At that time, the 16.5s were either 8.00-, 8.75-, or 9.50-16.5 and THAT WAS IT, PERIOD.

Those tires, ALL BIAS, NO RADIALs, were low-profile, having a very stiff short close-to-the-ground sidewall and a somewhat wider tread-face than the available 7.50-16s, which were a somewhat narrower and much taller tire, in fact the 7.50-16s are exactly the same height as a 235-85-16, just a shade narrower.

Many were killed or permanently maimed and dis-figured from idiots insisting on mounting either 16-inch tires on the 16.5 rims or vice-versa, from the tires blowing off the wheels, not so much causing wrecks as killing the one mounting/inflating the tire.

We still get the occasional mis-mounted tire/wheel in the shop, although surely the dimmest witted idiot alive should know better by now.

The 16.5s were a nightmare from the beginning.

If they had a slow leak, or any leak for that matter, when the pressure got low enough, the bead would fall loose from the rim and be near impossible to get to "take air" without first removing said wheel from the vehicle.

If a tire went flat and was moving or moved, the beads would walk off the wheel; often the inside bead would go toward the leaf-springs, while the outside bead went off outward, leaving the wheel trapped inside, near impossible to get things back to rights with either hand-tools or machine.


Then, for reasons known only to themselves, some started building many of the bigger/wider tires in 16.5 rim sizes; tires with big tall floppy sidewalls, yet with the low-profile steep-angled 16.5 bead; I have never yet been able to figure the reasoning behind that when the normal-beaded 15s and 16s were a far superior design for the purpose.


Due more so from the cheap availability of like-new junk-yard 16.5 wheels, and un-educated consumers, numerous trailers were sold with 16.5 wheels; most of the owners of these have since swapped to 16-inch wheels.

I often see 16.5 wheels at swap meets, the vendors trying to play dumb and pawn them off as 16s to un-witting buyers that may lack a sharp enough eye to spot the difference, never really claiming that they are indeed 16s, while insinuating that they are.


For highway use, the 16.5 tire/wheel combo has went the way it should have = extinct.

There is a plaque on the wall of our business that states 54-years in business; there are nine big bays; big trucks that go "CHHHH" back to the dock and unload hundreds of new tires almost daily; we have tires to fit anything from the smallest push-dolly to the biggest John Deere around; and there has not been a highway-use 16.5 tire in our stock since Gerald Ford was president.

We occassionally special-order them for someone that hasn't yet switched to 16s and it takes weeks of waiting and hours of phone-calls to many warehouse distributors before a set of four can be found.

Ironically, nearly all skid-steers ( BOBCATs ), and all regular-sized back-hoes built in the last twenty years, come equipped with 12-16.5 tires/wheels and they are a constant source of headaches and down-time.

 

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

I forgot to mention that the advent of the 16.5 was when a solid "single-piece" 8-lug 16-inch wheel was almost non-existent.

Nearly EVERY 8-lug wheel, be it SRW or DRW, even many of the 1/2-ton 15-inchers, were "split-ring" "two-piece" wheels, having the requisite tube and flap/liner.

You had to break these down with a genuine tire-hammer; there was no commonly available automatic changer that would work.

Many is the idiot that has tried to use an old second-hand 16.5 tire on one of these already deadly split-ring wheels.

Just the other day, some wood-cutter guy brought one in the shop and wanted it repaired, 16.5 tire mounted on a 16-inch split-ring wheel that was outlawed in 1978.

 

[snicklas]

Yep,

We had a 1973 F-250, 2wd, Regular Cab, long bed, Explorer Package, with the toolbox in the bottom outside pasenger side bedside. We bought this truck used in 1978, and it had 5 factory steel 16.5 tire/wheel combo's on it. We had that truck from 1978 until 1986 when we bought the 83 F-150. I remember the truck needing tires, and Dad ran "street tread" 9.50-16.5 tires on the front, and the "traction tread" 9.50-16.5 on the rear. I remember the rears very well, had the large lugs cut in at the sidewall, and a continous "Z" pattern around the very center of the tire. He normally bought the tires for that truck as Sears, and the last set that he tried to get a Sears, he found out were actually "re-cap" tires, that were no round, and a couple were 8.75 casings that had 9.50 molded into the sidewall.... after 2 or 3 trys, Dad got his money back. To get a good set of tires for that truck, Dad had to go to Goodyear and buy a set, and I think when he got that set in 81 or 82 the 9.50-16.5 LT (Yes that is how the tire read) was something like $120 a tire..... I think he has almost $500 in tires on that truck.... in 1981!!!!!! He was very happy the "new" truck had 15" rims on it......

 

[IDIDieselJohn]

I love those old tires for the tread patern they had on 'em. The big Z lugs, and "road tire" tread. They look great on old trucks!

 

[Clydesdale]

Have some 9.00x16 bias here, on split rims... been using them for rollers on crusher trucks. Anyway, if these are younger than 40 years old, i would be shocked....probably go back the 60's.

They are still holding air for the most part.

 

[Agnem]

16.5 alluminum wheels were all the rage back in the early 80's, and I have been running them for 26 years with no issues at all. I think this is only the 3rd set of tires the Moose Truck has ever run on. I've verified that no 16.5 tires are available new from anybody. The catalogs that still list them, say they are special order and not available. So... this will be the last rally the Moose Truck will be seen in with it's original wheels. I have purchased a single 16" wheel that I am going to test-fit this weekend, and if I like it, I will end up with 5 more of them, and then tires over the course of the rest of the year. I will have two spare 16.5 BFG's like what I am running, that are probably 20 years old with me that I can use in an emergency, and I will hopefully have this new 16" rim with me that I can then buy a tire for if needed. Being that we are in our own convoy, I'm afforded some protection from the Night Moose and Lady Moose keeping watch over my sneakers.

 

[david85]

Well if rolling resistance is higher with bias ply, then that reason enough for me to keep running radials on everything. Think I paid $120 per tire for the brand new toyo open country rubber I have now which isn't bad for a 10 ply tire (canadian $!). With so many guys like John out there that want the cool looking tread, I guess the highway tires aren't worth as much Just, kidding, John. I have some OLD 235/75/15 tires like that for my F150 and that truck was a whole different animal when I put them on for driving in the snow. Really stiff and I probably wouldn't want to take them over 50 MPH, but they grabed as good as if I had chains on it.

As far as I'm concerned Z treads are the only real off road tread that can actually grab. The other "all terrain" tires are just made to look high tech but are as useless as bald tires when it comes to snow, mud, or loose gravel.

 

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

.. been using them for rollers on crusher trucks.

What on earth is a "crusher truck" and what part does the roller perform ??

 

[BrandonMag]

What on earth is a "crusher truck" and what part does the roller perform ??

I'd bet a 'crusher truck' is a truck destined for the crusher.

I know that a set of 'rollers' are a set of crappy tires/wheels that you use to get a vehicle moved a short distance.