The tires on the rear of my 65' Panel are Michelins, (ground) in Alb. NM. I have put 40,000 +/- miles on them. The man that buffed them in Alb. said "The compound in Michelins makes them the easiest tires to grind".
Cool machine. I had a '54 Ford Mainline a few years back. I wanted the thin white walls to be wide whites. I didn't have any money to buy new tires, and I didn't know that I could do it myself at the time. I called around and found a local tire shop that had a sidewall grinder. I went over there to see it in action. The guy charged $15/tire at the time (in 2003). I went home and did mine on the car with an angle grinder. Put the rear in the air and put it in gear. Worked for me. But since then, I've been considering building a whitewall grinding setup, just never had the time to do it.
i worked at a GM dealership back in the late 80's-early90's and we has a guy come to the shop a few times a month and cut whitewalls in tires right on the car. he jacked the car and set on a jug that had 2 rollers and an electric to spin the tire and an adjustable cutter to cut in about an 1/8-1/4" depth groove. then the guy had a few widths roller paint pens and painted the whitewall on and it held up really nice and didnt peel off like i thought it would
Uniroyal TigerPaws have a big layer of white underneath and they match up end to end so no split in the white.
These are the rims/tires I used to have on my Merc. The ww's on the tires were ground. Tires were cheapy $40 tires and a shop by my house did the ww's for $10 each. I was pretty happy with the result. (a little dirty in this pic)
I just let my wife drive.........then when she parks and rubs against the curbs, rotate the tires to the other side and give her the car again.
Used to be an old guy doing it in Melbourne (Australia) with an on car roller machine set up... Stopped seeing him 10 years ago, wonder where the set up got too...
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