As Moriarity mentioned in other Threads regarding Bias Ply issues there may be certain groups of tires that create headaches...as in 16" bia plys...He mentioned he runs 15" bias plys and never has had balance issues... Perhaps the older 16" molds are responsible and it's not cost effective to repair them...that is unfortunate if the molds are the problem...I believe they are the original molds they use...
It's a profit thing. How many bias tires does a company sell in a year compared to how many radials? Bias tires are a very small market with a small profit margin compared to the radial market. While it's true they may cost more than a similar sized radial, they sell many less of them so they have to have the higher prices to increase the profit to a level comparable with what several radials might bring in. It makes better business sense to improve the product you sell the most of, and sell the other stuff so you can keep a share of that market. And if you have all the market, you don't have to do anything, if someone wants that product they will buy it and put up with it's shortcomings.
Holy crap. I hope NOBODY thinks this is a good idea or follows this process. From a cheap OEM scissor jack holding a running car in the air, jamming a chunk of wood into a spinning tire and having it kick back at him, and for the finale, the planer on a block of wood and a tarp to true a tire. No thanks.
Didn't get past 28 secs. I could just tell it was going to be full of bad ideas and poor decision making.
Not 100% sure of the correct response to that video, but I think it might be "FU#K ME".......... When he gives the thumbs up at the four minute mark, is that blood all over his hand?
Wasn't Coker one of the many independent tire manufacturers that Good Year bought our a few years ago? If so, Good Year tells them what they can or can't do. I suspect rebuilding the tire molds, or replacing them on a small specialty market like certain sized bias ply tires are, isn't a very high priority for Good Year. I started mounting and repairing tires at that 1st job in the gas station in 72. If radial tires existed, we couldn't get them until at least mid 73, so all the tires I mounted in that 1st year was a bias ply. We balanced every tire we mounted, we had an on the car spin balancer, I got pretty good at using it. back then, any tire that required more then 4 ozs to balance, it was standard procedure to break the bead and rotate the tire on the wheel 180 degrees (not 120 degrees, 180 degrees). Nearly every time it reduced the amount of weight the tire required to balance them, but occasionally it didn't help. I have also seen where if a tire needed a lot of weight to balance, and you got a vibration, sometimes rotating the tire one to different wheel studs even made a big difference, I'd recommend moving the wheel two studs around from where it was, drums and rotors are not always true either. That is the reason spin balancing the tire on the car was a better balance. It was also the reason my old boss insisted you mark the wheel to the stud when ever you removed a wheel, so the same tire was put on the same drum, on the same stud, so you didn't loose the balance. Poor tire balance just doesn't show up on some cars like it does others. I've owned a few cars over the years that never needed to have the tires balanced, but other cars where if just one tire was an once out of balance, the car had such a bad vibration you would think the car was going to start throwing parts off of it. Gene
3 pages started over a picture of a wheel and tire with weights on it. Went to how to balance a tire to coker tires suck to videos on what not to do. Only on the H.A.M.B.
when you rev up to 7000 RPM and then pop the clutch … does it make that much difference on tire balance?
I rather doubt Coker take a profit hit hit on ANY of their products. All of them are priced higher than a cat's back!
I guess I was lucky on got better ones as it only took 275 grams to almost zero balance the L78-15 Cokers on the back end of my 34 Plymouth. After a few hunderd miles I had the car up for something else and I noticed I had lost all weights except a 50 gram one. I never felt the difference, but I´ll admit I drove the rear tires at a very low pressure since the car was light and the the tires big. The "massaged "more down the road than they actually rolled, that may have helped them not to vibrate terribly even without the weights...
One last thing on the Balance Beads......Make Sure you use the valve core they supply with the beads! If not, when you go to check your tire pressure a bead or two will get caught in the old valve & let all your air out when you pull away your gauge! You don't have to bother asking how I know! God Bless Bill https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...ar-transport-hauling-open-or-enclosed.614419/
Truck shops usually have a tire shaver. I worked at one truck alignment shop and we trued up a lumpy tire now and then. Look for the oldest shop in town.
Yep...four weight bubble balance, been doing it that way since my first real job in 1976. Always have had good luck. Just mounted four race tires on Super Tricks and they took more weight then I was expecting. Even after turning the tires on the wheels, which didn't help much, it was a bunch of weight. About 6-7ozs each. Just wasn't expecting that! Tire manufacturing?? Gene.
I thought so too. Before I found K&L, I called 12 big truck shops. Most had no idea what I was talking about. I thought living in the NJ/NY Metro area, someone would have to have a tire shaver. Not the ones I called. I just looked up tire shaving machines for sale. The one I saw locally for $700 cost almost $10K new. Doh! https://www.mile-x.com/tsi-1200r-am...win5kXODXOzVOwScENcuQ7HnH0NoDUUBoCII4QAvD_BwE
Either that or impacted burnt rubber. I saw another video a long time ago, guy built a floor jig with a spindle, hub and a planer on a sliding rack. There's truth in that, I think. My very light Bantam has big M/T bias plies in back, one is lumpy and the spin balancer just says 'error' when I try to balance it. I only run 15 psi and it surprising goes down the freeway without issue.
Hello, This story is as old as the hills… most used cars have gone through plenty of road hazards and difficulties in their lifetime. So, the important thing to start with is checking the rims for over-used nut holes. Then once it fits nicely, then check the round tire theory. We have all taken for granted that tires, new and old are round. They should be if new, but we also know that factories cannot inspect all new tires for complete round status. It is like the local landscape gardeners, “mow, blow and go…” The tire production is mass produced and that in itself, causes plenty of error here and there. Pour, Pop them out and they are for sale to the unsuspecting consumer. For all of the old cars we have had, tires are/were the major problem, even when new. Since getting the new tires on a 58 Chevy Impala, we were told to go to this place in Los Angeles to get the tires shaved to make them round… that was good for a laugh at the time. We were using the Impala to drive to high school and to race on the weekends. We followed the expert advice and the tire shaving left so much rubber on the ground that we thought we had lost 100s of miles of cruising on the floor. But, after the trip to the wheel alignment/balance guy, he did his magic and the Impala rolled easier, ran smoother and the tires did not take a lot of those old hammered on weights. As good as the bubble balancers were back then, it does not compare to the modern spinning wheel machines. It did help on long distance road trips or just cruising on the highways and definitely, there were no wobbles at high speed at the drags. So, by 1965, the new El Camino needed something when I was driving plenty of miles to northern California for college. I got sent to the same tire shaving guy and then to a custom tire alignment/balance guy and the expertise took over for the smoothest alignment and road handling experience in the 65 El Camino. I was glad to go to the Culver City wheel/tire guy and let him do his magic. Jnaki About 15 years later, our expert tire/wheel alignment guy moved his business to the big OC and now it was near our house. So, when the same thing was happening to the 327 powered 40 Ford Sedan Delivery, he suggested to get the tires shaved, before he did anything on the sedan delivery. The old tires that came with the project sedan delivery were too old, so we bought 4 new tires. After having them shaved and balanced, again, it looked like I paid for less overall miles due to the pile of rubber on the floor. Then he did his magic of spin balancing and included an on the car rolling machine balance just to check the correct amount of balancing. Everything lined up correctly, but it all started with tire shaving on those new tires. Without shaving and getting those tires true round first, balancing on any machine will do next to nothing to solve any handling difficulties. Check the rims, and true the tires, then go for your own style of balancing. There must be something to be said about modern tire/wheel alignment shops not having bubble balancers any more, too. Convenient for home garage set ups, but technology does offer better identification and settings. For the purists, tires all have the same problems as does the hot rod front end, due to tires, suspension and amount of use. YRMV
You guys got part of the message, but perhaps I should have explained it better. Yep the way the guy did this was pretty dumb......I agree 100%.........BUT, it was also kind of ingenious too. His application was terrible and risky...........but it did accomplish what he wanted. The idea (from my perspective) is that anyone who is nostalgia oriented and uses tires that they know have roundness problems, needs a solution. The use of a planer is a pretty ingenious solution. Something a real 50s hot rodder might do if they had power planers back then. The idea I hoped others would pick up on is that a planer could be used to true a tire. Obviously you can see that the video demonstrates a poor and dangerous method of applying the tool to the job........a "How NOT to do it example". An intelligent Hamber should have no trouble fashioning up a car axle that could be mounted to a heavy table and rotated much more slowly. A simple tool support such as a wood lathe operator uses would allow someone to control the application of the planer so it moves truly accross the face of a tire. It would allow the dyed in the wool nostalgia tire guys a simple way to always true their tires.......and their friends tires. So yes, don't do it like the guy in the video did it, but think about how simple it would be to make a safe way to do it. Something is better than nothing when you don't know any place with a tire shaver. Thats what I'm talkin about Willis....... Moriarty, yes its not a bias ply tire. Still the idea is to adapt some currently and easily available technology to solve a problem and that was the example that I was able to find. It should work equally well on a bias ply tire if someone takes the time to make a safe mounting set up. I would think that anyone who has a spin balancer available might be able to make a mounting bracket to fit it. Not sure how slowly they will turn,but think it should be fine. So my apologies for not including clarification along with the video, and hopefully we'll see a future thread where someone has made a viable set up for truing tires at home.
Maybe you missed it but about 25 years ago this same manufacturer sold about 5000 inner tubes that were absolute junk. The "rubber" tore like an old newspaper. I had a few that tore just assembling the tires. They knew it and still sold them. Greed is a horrible thing. As to old bias ply tires I had many sets back in the 60's and 70's that ran true, no balance weights, never cupped. And they didn't crack like new ones.
Call Gus' Wheel Alignment in East Islip (Long Island), I know they used to have a tire shaver when I worked there.
As far as replacing tire molds goes, the absolute best mold manufacturers are in Europe and, as of about 10 years ago, an average size passenger car mold would cost about $10,000 - not cheap BUT not much for a big company to justify spending...
They could probably pop a hell of a lot more tires out of that new mold, if they were better tires in the first place. Once word gets out that the tires are round, like they're supposed to be, more people would buy them.
Count how many companies are making bias-ply tires. That will give you a very good idea just how big the market it. I will give you a hint: it's tiny. There is not much incentive to improve if you are the only game in town, or one of two. Companies like Coker seem content to ignore the problem, or just pull the lever on the tire slot-machine, and hope they give the disgruntled buyer a decent tire this time.
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