Projects Coker Vintage Tires Quality

I hope I'm not jinxing myself but I've bought 3 sets of Coker bias ply tires and 1 set of the Coker Classic "bias look" radials. I haven't ever had any trouble with any of them. ??

 

I think the biggest problem for small manufacturers like Coker is volume. Not the total volume they sell each year, but volume in any given size of any given tread and sidewall design, radial and bias. A huge cost is molds.... you need a different mold for every size, so mold maintenance and replacement is going to be centered on the 'big movers', the odd balls will be made on molds in whatever condition they happen to be in at the time of manufacture, which is probably why some people report good luck with certain tires and others have nothing but problems. Unfortunately, they catalogue everything they have molds for, good or bad and we as consumers have no idea what the quality of the tooling is (and they sure as hell won't tell us). That's why even inexpensive, popular sized tire brands will probably be rounder and truer than a seldom built Coker. I know a lot of us don't want to be like the SBC power Model A next door, we want to be different, but we pay a price for that individuality, especially with manufacturers that deny they have 'issues' and leave us hanging out to dry. Just like The Hoffman Group.... buyer beware!

 

I built my Olds in 1982, drove it all over the country to car shows. Coker 7.10 x 15 Firestones. I ran thorough 3 sets of them, never had a problem. Put almost 40K miles on each set.
On my 54 Chevy I got some of the first radial WWW's. Put around 30 k miles on it, no problems, either. On my new build, I'm using Diamondback Auburn bias look-alikes, just so they look period correct.

 

I have never owned a set of Coker’s. When I “restored” my 1950 3100 back in 1989, Dad and I found a farm store that sold Star brand tires. They had in stock, 6.50-16 Star Super Truck straight tread steer tires and Dad let me choose a 7.50-16 Star traction type tire for the rear. All were bias ply. Those tires stayed on the truck until 2012 when we started getting a little worried about the age of them, the truck is always parked inside. We looked at Coker, but they seemed a little expensive. I had a buddy that worked at a local tire shop, he suggested a brand called STA, which stands for Specialty Tires of America. They make all kinds of old type of tires including farm tires. We put their 6.50-16 straight treads all they way around, they drive great, no problems at all. I’ve only had it up to 60 mph briefly, it still has (for now) the 216, and I’m afraid to run it any harder.

 

What alternatives are there for early hot rods besides Coker? I’d like to run 500/525-16 fronts on my ‘29 roadster project and I can’t find anyone but Coker making a suitable black-wall that size. There has been a lot of talk about Diamondback, but a I didn’t see anything you’d put on a traditional model A. Lots of great looking tires for later cars though. Where should I be looking? Thanks.

 

Go to the Diamondback website and look up Auburn Deluxe. Available in many sizes, black or whitewall. They are radial though.

 

Thanks, x38!

 

Have Cokers on my Chevy and have had no issues. They do yellow quickly though. Lots of bleach white and steel wool.

 

I know this thread is about Coker quality, or lack thereof, but has anyone tried the repop Goodyear's that Kelsey Tire sell's? Seem's like the only other bias ply alternative. Would be interesting to hear opinion's on them.

 

I think you may find limited sizes in each style.
I bought 6.70/15 Super Cushions, which is the size I wanted, but they only come in a couple of sizes. Haven't driven on them yet. Bought via Summit.

 

I've put about 800 miles on the two new Coker Classics on the front of my car. Granted, I do not go any faster than 60 in the car but they're good at highway speeds.
The ones that came off had gone very hard, they were at least 5 years old because they were on the car when I got it.
Tire shop said they balanced up easily. They appear to be round and sitting a week doesn't cause any appreciable flat spots.
The whitewalls on the old ones cleaned up well enough with a scrub brush each time the car was washed.
The new ones have been difficult to get rid of the blue protective coating they arrived with.

But, for a set of repop bias ply tires,a little steep in price but that's the cost of doing business and not have them made in China.

 

I bought a set of radial ww tires several years ago and they cracked at the edge of the whitewall. returned them to coker for a 2nd set at no charge from coker. 2nd set did the same thing. Returned them again at no charge and promptly gave them to a friend for his 40 pickup. On the brighter side i also purchased a pair of firestone 16" dirt trackers (when they were affordable) and a pair of 600x16 bias ply . Ran those tires all over the country. Now the dirt trackers cost more for one tire than i paid for 2. Will stick with Diamond backs from now on.

 

There is word by more than one that their Los Angeles outlet was pushing tires with slight blemish while tires of integrity sat in the inventory racks . I will have to say I was told this at Vets Stadium Swap meet as I said I wanted a set for one of Erika's cars and now have bowed out and another man told me he was unhappy with the purchase and the LA shop altogether and he became a satisfied customer with Universal . I also heard from others who felt not quite right doing business with Coker . It's important I know these things and it's important I trust the sources of my information as I need to refer my customers also so when solid people tell me these things I am tending to believe them and steer the other way . As for Cokers quality I get mixed comments . Two people have told me the car steers funny after mounting Cokers . Is it the application or the tire or the service people or a salesman selling wrong tires ? Can it all be blamed on Coker ? I believe some things need changing in their business when you have failed multiple customers . I do remember Coker was top name in the Special Interest Auto Tire Industry . What happened ? I'd say Engineering , QC and Service Departments . So I've not bought Erika's tires yet I am currently looking at Universals inventory . Maybe I get them out of Germany I'm going to research that option also . What I want to know is if all these Special Interest Tires are produced at the same vulcanizing factory and are same engineers designing these . I also have recently noticed a couple small boutique type tire company's I think I will check them out also .
I do know one thing I like my tire on the road not on the rack with a flashlight on it all the time . Thank you for your thread and do have a good day

 

Is there any correlation between the sale of Coker Tire when Corky retired and the hit/miss product quality today, or has the problem always been there?
Coker has always owned the molds as far as I know, so is the hit/miss quality due to lax control in the manufacturing process, i.e. bad layup, mold shift, inconsistent compounding, splicing overlap, etc.? Is the process run by a “close enough, it looks good from here” mentality, or modern day standards.
For what they charge there should be ZERO product issues! Or, like other companies,
quality products and customer satisfaction comes AFTER bottom line profitability.

 

I bought a pair of Coker Classic tires this year, they took a whole bunch of weight to balance them. Much more than the pair they replaced, from 2014.

 

The way it was explained to me is that the molds they are using are old and as they wear, they lose their "roundness". The cookie classics I purchased took a ton of weight and at 70 MPH I thought my car was going to come apart, I slowed to 60 and it was a lot better. Since slowness makes me angry, I replaced them with Auburns from DB and did nothing else to the car and it runs to 100 MPH with no issue. As a result, I can't say all their tires are crap, the ones I bought were though and I will not purchase any more from them. Hot rods deserve to be in the fast lane.

 

I have worked in the tire industry, first in the 1980s when bias ply were still sold new, and then again recently.
Not here to defend Coker, and frankly have had no experience with them.

Just some tips that may help with tire issues....
1) Back in the day, my mechanic buddy and I would do several burnouts with bias belted tires and then get them balanced again on our personal cars. This was an effort to insure the tire actually was round.
2) Tire shaving is a lost art and only a few practitioners are active now. I did read a good article lately, probably Hot Rod magazine in the past few months. This is pretty much necessary if running 100+ mph and running bias belted tires.
3) If a standard size tire is pushing 3 ounces of weight, I would try clocking it 180 degrees and see if the balance improves. On one of my cars, I took clocking tires to the extreme. (It was a very SLOW day at the shop). This took remounting each tire at least 3-4 tires. I got three tires down to .25 ounce and one down to .5 ounce. That 10 year old car was really smooth afterwards and that was on bias belted tires that were half used up. (Hey, I KNEW they were round. lol)
4) Dirt track tires ... anything that size is going to be much more challenging to balance. You have so much mass at play there. Balance beads can be a better solution. Many 4wd shops use them on all truck tires over 35 inches in diameter.
5) Many factory wheels were designed to be hub-centric. If you have changed a car to disc brakes or are running different wheels, you may no longer have a combo that is hub-centric, even though the bolt pattern is the same. This is super-common with aftermarket wheels in modern applications and as wheel diameter and consequent weight goes up, this has become a much bigger balance issue that can be pretty mysterious. Tire and wheel may balance off the car. There are many hub-centric rings available now that take up the gap between the hub and wheel. These are inexpensive plastic rings. They do not support weight, etc. They merely make the person bolting the lugs to the studs "Perfect". Measure the hub and the inside of your wheel and see if there is a gap. These can solve a lot of mystery balance issues.
6) How to figure out the perfect inflation pressure for your totally non-stock tire combo on your custom car that no longer resembles anything factory .... This is called "chalking" the tire. Literally. Have your car loaded with the typical number of butts in the seats and luggage you may take in the trunk. You want an accurate vehicle weight here. Over-inflate the tires. Draw a chalk line across the tread that extends up a bit on the sidewalls. Take the car out for a short normal drive. You should just see the chalk worn away in the middle of the tire. Drop the pressure 2 lbs and repeat. Keep doing this until it is wearing away the chalk to the edge of the tread, but not extending up the sidewalls. Add a pound or two and that should be your regular number your car/tire combo needs.
7) How to clean whitewalls.... this would refer to whitewalls and white letters actually formed into a tire. I would not know how this may damage ones that are add-ons after the tire is made, so use caution with those. A bit of yellowing over time is normal and similar to the brown yuck you get off a tire that needs to be cleaned. It is the tire pushing contaminants out and actually is healthy for the tire, but it should be removed. Fine steel wool is excellent at getting white letters and whitewalls looking much better. Bleche-White is also an excellent cleaner. The white is simply natural rubber without carbon black added to it and is layered in to the sidewall with some more rubber sprayed over it. Then they shave that last layer off to show the white embossed areas.

Neat fact ... A standard size car tire that loses a one ounce weight will cause the tire to bounce off the pavement at 60 miles an hour. If that is not impressive enough, consider that it is compressing the spring and shock to do this. There are a lot of dynamic forces at work here.

 

That's not actually true. You won't find even one tire or automobile manufacturer who says that. What they do say is to have the tires checked by a 'tire technician' to assess if they're still good, using their take on the amount of time that's passed, six years minimum, up to ten for some. What you'll find is the 'tire tech' will look at the build date and pronounce them bad based only on that. Most places will refuse to do any service on an 'expired' tire, but they're happy to sell you a new one (with the manufacturers happy to let the tire stores be the bad guys). This had far more to do with evading legal liability than any actual issues with 'aged' tires. The fact that it increased tire sales was gravy.

This 'tire expiration' nonsense came out of the Ford Explorer/Firestone tire debacle in the late '90s. After all the rollover deaths in Explorers from tire failures, Firestone, Goodyear, Ford and the NHTSA all did studies on possible causes. The NHTSA study was done in Phoenix Arizona, the urban area with the highest average daily temps in the US. At the end of all this, they found that if you live in the sunbelt your tires should be checked at six years service and they merely recommended possible replacement. Buried in the report was the nugget that they found that aging due to heat was exponential, if you lived in a cooler climate your tires would age at 1/2 or less of the rate in Phoenix.

As to the Explorer/Firestone fiasco, two tire causes were found. One, it was a crappy tire. Similar tires from other manufacturers didn't have this problem. And as it turned out, most were traced back to a single plant in Decatur Illinois that Firestone then closed, although the same model tires from other Firestone plants did have higher failure rates compared to the rest of the industry. The majority of failures were well short of six years. Interestingly enough, one source said Firestone projected a minimum 11 year service life for these tires. Two, Ford recommended a too-low inflation pressure to improve ride quality. This caused excessive heat buildup in the sidewalls, accelerating failure. Which brings up the point that the usual bias-ply practice of adjusting inflation pressure for ride/wear reasons is a bad idea with radials. Maintaining minimum pressures of 30 PSI or more is critical for radial tires.

The NHTSA also checked three years worth of accident reports in the US. They failed to find even one documentable case of an 'aged' tire being the cause of an accident. Road hazards were #1, with underinflation being #2.

So at the end of the day, we're back to where we started before Big Brother told us what to do; check your tires regularly for inflation, look for 'bruising', cuts, weather checking/cracking and use good judgement. Don't expect a pimply-faced 'tech' to do you any favors...

 

Hmmmm....things might be changing. From the owners manual for our new Tahoe:

" GM recommends that tires, including the spare if equipped, be replaced after six years, regardless of tread wear."

I doubt this has anything to do with how crappy Coker tires have gotten lately, though.

 

Coker tires are sometimes even round!

Sometimes!

 

I don't know why it is so hard to understand that like most old technology, the proper steps aren't taken to insure a properly installed product in the modern world.. In the bias ply era there is a reason why tire shavers were commonly found at any place that installed tires. As a general rule of thumb, bias ply tires need to be shaved round once installed on a wheel. This was common practice when these were the only thing available. The introduction of radial tires and the effects of time, and most have forgotten this fact. Then wonder why their 100 year old technology doesn't work as well as the radials on the wife's minivan.

 

They're still not saying that 'expired' tires are unsafe. But I'm not surprised by this; they've been beating this drum for over 10 years now so for the uninformed this has become a truism. In your case you live near where the NHTSA study was done, so it may be applicable for you. Where I live, my tires age at about 1/3 the heat-related rate as yours.

And Coker is silent on the expire date of their tires, recommendation or otherwise.

 

I have been looking for a tire shaving machine. They are steadily being scrapped.

I assume them to be out-of-round, until proven otherwise, and expect to have them shaved.

It is becoming harder and harder to find a shop to do it.

I would love to bring it in-house, before all of the machines are gone.

 

Bridgestone/Firestone, Toyo and Michelin all say on their website that they recommend any tire over 10yrs old be replaced regardless of wear.

 

Ask them what factors they used to arrive at that. All tires aren't exposed to the same environmental conditions, doesn't it seem odd that they have a one-size-fits-all solution?

 

Most legit tire shops will not fix, service or mount tires over 10 years old. Liabilty.

 

No it doesn't any product that degrades over time will have a mean recommendation as to when not to use it anymore because you can't account for all situations. I work for a chemical manufacturer we have a warranty period and we have a shelf life that over which we do not recommend using it anymore. Products could last way longer if stored properly or less if store improperly.

 

Thanks for sharing.
When I was working for Goodyear, I had a friend who was a product services manager for
BGSTN/FSTN. He was directly involved with the Explorer-Firestone issue, handling the massive recall and tire replacement for thousands of Ford owners.
One contributing factor was the recommended inflation on the Explorer doorpost was less than the inflation/load on the tire’s sidewall.
Picture an Explorer, loaded down with vacationing family and luggage, running 70+ mph, across the Southwest, with air temps at 100 +/-, with under-inflated tires for the load. Tremendous heat buildup, externally from high road surface temps and internally from over flexing of the radial casing, and you had the perfect recipe for belt package separations and casing failures, ending in loss of control, road runoff and roll overs.

 

Let me start with this. I am talking about 16" bias ply Firestone tires sold by Coker.

That said, c'mon, man. Coker knows which tire sizes their molds are shot and which aren't. For at almost $300 a piece for some sizes, shave the f-cking tire for me. Why should I have to spend another $50 plus the hassle on doing it after I find out its Coker's out of round tires trying to shake the car apart at 50 mph.

It was a day of my time to drive 100 miles each way to find the nearest shop that was willing to shave them for me.

Bottom line. My car was undriveable before shaving the tires. Shaved the tires, it will go to 100 mph no problem. The huge pile of rubber laying at the bottom of the machine didn't lie.

The shaving blade does not move. It's the tire that makes contact with the blade. Coker should be ashamed for the crap they are putting out.

They know it's a problem, their customers know it's a problem. Fix the f-cking problem.